"T ♦. 








Class 
Book. 

Copyright }»i°._ 



O 



COraRlGOT DEPOStr. 






'BLUE P« ELDS 



C O s T A^ 

JiAH J05€ 




\ 



\ 



I 

\ I 



yk»f«STOM 



i B B i 



'AV. - - ^ 



ByjuRflrtQw-LAJ 



C/1RTA6EJ^) 



C O U C 



SAILING SOUTH 




MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA 



SAILING SOUTH 



BY 

PHILIP SANFORD MARDEN 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

^ht S^itoecjjitie pzt^^ Cambriti0e 

1921 






COPYRIGHT, I93I, BY PHILIP S. MARDEN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



3.5" 



>? 






FEB iyi^2' 

0)CI,A608423 



PREFACE 

IN justice alike to the author and the gentle 
reader it should be said well in advance that the 
aim of this book is diversion rather than instruction. 
The few and fleeting glimpses that are herein re- 
corded cannot qualify one as an expert on tropi- 
cal countries. Only the most superficial effort has 
been made to purvey useful information, historical 
or otherwise. The chapters which follow contain 
chiefly the personal observations incident to casual 
winter cruising, such as one embodies in letters 
home; and that they are embodied in this enduring 
form is possibly not to be justified even by the be- 
lief that the field remains thus far too meagerly 
tilled. Nevertheless this book is offered in the hope 
that innocent enjoyment may be afforded to such 
as may be present or prospective visitors to lands 
which the author has himself found delightful and 
interesting places wherein to spend a brief winter's 
holiday. The islands and countries visited are few 
and are far from being unfamiliar. It is a book con- 
cerned exclusively with the beaten track. But if it 
suffices to enliven the tedium of a day at sea, or to 
awaken pleasant memories, or to arouse the desire 



vi PREFACE 

for more intimate acquaintance with the environs 
of the Caribbean, it will not have been written in 
vain. All of which is said, not by way of apology, 
and still less in the hope of disarming criticism, but 
solely in the interests of honesty and in the desire to 
forestall misconception as to the scope and inten- 
tion of the book. 

Philip Sanford Marden 



Lowell, Mass. 
August, 1920 



CONTENTS 

PART ONE. CUBA AND PANAMA 

I. Sailing South 3 

II. Around the Caribbean 17 

III. Havana 29 

IV. Panama and the Canal 48 
V. The Zone and the Republic 63 

VI. A Panamanian Interlude 76 

VII. In Costa Rica 90 

VIII. San Jose 106 

PART TWO. PORTO RICO 

IX. Preparing for Porto Rico 123 

X. San Juan 140 

XI. An Island Capital 155 

XII. Motoring in Porto Rico 177 

XIII. Sugar 190 

XIV. From Ponce to Arecibo 200 

PART THREE. JAMAICA 

XV. Kingston 215 

XVI. The Isle of Springs 243 

XVII. A Jamaican Motor Flight 256 

XVIII. The North Coast 267 

XIX. Port Antonio 279 

XX. Rafting in Jamaica 291 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

MoRRO Castle, Havana Frontispiece '' 

In Cristobal 24 / 

O'Reilly Street, Havana 38 

The Cathedral, Havana 42 

A Jungle River, Panama 52 

The Army Transport Mount Vernon in the 
Upper Chamber, Miraflores Locks 56 

The Ruins, Old Panama 72 

Wayside Cockpit, Panama 84 

In the Banana Country 94 

In Rural Costa Rica 102 

A Central American Street Group 106 

Costa RiCAN Bullock Carts 112 

San Juan Harbor 138 

Ancient Sea Wall, San Juan 146 

Over the Roofs, San Juan 152 

SiDE-HiLL Street, San Juan 158 

The Massive Fortifications, San Juan 164 

On the Road to Ponce 200 

In the Gardens of the Casa Blanca 210 

The Waving Palms of Jamaica 228 

Native Hut near Kingston 244 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

Old Cathedral at Spanish Town, Jamaica 258 

Old Church, Annotta Bay, Jamaica 282 

View from Porch of Titchfield Hotel, Port 
Antonio 286 

MAPS 

Caribbean Sea End papers 

Canal Zone 55 

Porto Rico 167 



PART ONE 
CUBA AND PANAMA 



CHAPTER I 
SAILING SOUTH 

THOSE whose experience of the sea consists 
solely in voyaging to and from Europe will 
find sailing south decidedly a different, and in many 
ways a more impressive, performance. To one's sur- 
prise, the undoubted fact of the earth's sphericity, 
usually taken on trust, becomes an intimate and 
interesting reality. 

There is comparatively little realization of this 
fact to be gleaned from a mere east-and-west pas- 
sage — always under familiar stars and roughly 
in the same general climate. One might pursue a 
consistently eastward course over sea and land, 
from New York to New York, and the only notable 
alterations would be in the daily gain of half an 
hour or so until one reached home again, after pass- 
ing that mysterious point in mid-Pacific where it 
is always either day-before-yesterday or day-after- 
to-morrow (I have never been quite certain which, 
but know at least that it is never at that point what 
the rest of the world regards as to-day). The heavens 
as viewed from Naples are much the same as those 
observed from Boston, Yokohama, Petrograd, and 



4 SAILING SOUTH 

London. It is sailing south that suddenly con- 
vinces you of the terrestrial rotundity — partly 
because of phenomena in the heavens above and no 
less notably because of climatic changes on the 
earth beneath. 

One goes down over the rim of the horizon into 
different seas and different skies — so rapidly that 
the changes force themselves upon even the most 
casual notice. Surely the Dipper is curiously out of 
place ! It is dipping — as no doubt a dipper should ! 
As for that star low in the south and just above the 
prow — surely that is one you never saw before! 
It may be an outpost of the Southern Cross! Curi- 
osity as to the .Southern Cross is almost the first 
symptom of the acquisition of sea-legs on a south- 
bound liner. Passengers seem to expect it to dawn 
in full splendor upon them about the second night 
out. Obliging first-officers usually inform you that 
it can be seen if you care to come on deck at some 
outrageous hour like two in the morning — and the 
few who act upon this advice will invariably report 
that they saw this famous, but much overrated, 
constellation. Whether or not they did so in fact 
one may hardly dispute, since dispute in such a 
case is at once futile and unkind. I hasten to make 
confession that I have never yet seen the true 
Southern Cross and doubt that many of the thou- 



SAILING SOUTH 5 

sands who claim to have viewed it ever really saw 
it without going much farther south than the City 
of Panama. I have been told by credible persons 
that in any case it is a disappointing galaxy — not 
to be compared with either the Dipper or Orion — 
which owes its fame largely to the principle of omne 
ignotum. 

By day, it is the abrupt change of climate that 
emphasizes the fact of the earth's globularity — 
a change for the better, due to the swift approach 
to latitudes where the sun of winter is more nearly 
overhead and therefore more concentrated in effect. 
You have left behind a miserable and half-frozen 
population, dwelling on the top of a sadly tilted 
planet and temporarily well out of the sun's path — 
but you yourself are crawling steadily down over 
the face of the terrestrial ball into a more genial 
condition of things. 

Besides, there is the Gulf Stream — a much- 
maligned current of warm water, often derided as 
a myth but apparently quite seriously regarded by 
such as do business in the great waters. On every 
passenger craft there will be smoke-room babble 
about the legendary character of the Gulf Stream. 
Respectable scientists have gravely informed me 
that it does not exist at all — that some ancient 
German geographer imagined it and engraved lines 



6 SAILING SOUTH 

on the map to represent it, whence all the world has 
been duped into accepting it as a reality. My own 
disposition is to become as a little child when at sea 
and accept all its myths as genuine truth. As for 
the Gulf Stream, I really don't see how we can do 
without it. Very possibly its effect upon the climate 
of Great Britain and Ireland has been overstressed 
— and very possibly the notion that it alone is what 
makes so notorious the rough passage to Bermuda 
is an exaggeration. But when you find hourly can- 
vas buckets of water hauled gravely to the bridge 
and see thermometers inserted therein, as seriously 
as if the ocean were a fever patient, you gather that 
the navigator has a firm belief in the reality of the 
warm current that pours out of the Florida straits 
and makes its way uphill toward Newfoundland 
and the distant North. 

If you make the voyage from New York to Ha- 
vana, you will find the ship kept close inshore with 
the idea of avoiding as far as may be the opposing 
force of a four-knot current; and conversely as you 
sail northward again you will observe that the vessel 
is kept well offshore in search of such assistance as 
the favoring stream can give. Wherefore it seems 
both safe and sane to accept the Gulf Stream as 
entirely real and a moderately useful provision of a 
wise Creator. 



SAILING SOUTH 7 

Setting, as this current does, from southwest 
to northeast, much depends upon the direction of 
the wind when it comes to the net effect upon the 
surface of the sea. A wind blowing with the current, 
if it be not in itself a violent breeze, will presumably 
insure a reasonably smooth passage. A wind vehe- 
mently opposing the surface current of the waters 
will infallibly make it rough. I imagine there are 
such things as mill-pond passages to the Bermudas, 
although common account discredits this. 

The great bugaboo of southern sailing, of course, 
is Hatteras. The very name has a raucous sound 
suggestive of howling gales and turbulent seas. 
Most of us have dreaded Hatteras from our cradles. 
Hatteras is the cape formed by a malignant elbow 
thrust into the Atlantic by the otherwise chival- 
rous State of North Carolina. I suspect that it 
really does influence the weather to some extent, 
whether because of its impulsion of the Gulf Stream, 
or its mysterious influence on the depths of air. At 
all events, I note that the Government commonly 
"orders storm-warnings displayed from Hatteras to 
Eastport" when it scents trouble brewing among 
the elements. But after one has made divers voy- 
ages to and from the southern ports one comes to 
regard Hatteras as a somewhat slandered promon- 
tory, chiefly because one may conceivably pass that 



8 SAILING SOUTH 

way a dozen times and note nothing at all amiss 
in the conduct of the weather. The notion that you 
are bound to meet with a storm off tliis much- 
malif^^ned apex of our southern coast-Hne may l)e 
(llsinissed as nonsense. You may, or you may 
ii()(. Tlie wise traveler goes to sea and takes what 
comes. 

Cape Ilatteras, hy (hv. way, is not commonly 
visible from the ships that go southward seeking. 
West Indian ports. In fact after you leave the Jersey 
Ilighlands you will not see land again for some time. 
If you ;u-e making for Havana, you will probably 
pick up the Florida shore somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood of Cape Carnavcral, and will, for the sake of 
avoiding hostile currents, skirt the low-lying roast 
of Palm lU-ach so closely as almost to imperil the 
bathers of that Lucullan retreat. If you are bound 
for Porto Rico, you will see absolutely no land of any 
sort or kind until you sight the lofty mountains that 
rise behind San Juan. If Jamaica be your goal, you 
will see — ^ unless, as usually haj^iK'ns on shi|)s, you 
pass in the night — Watling's Island, which Colum- 
bus more piously and appnjpriately christened San 
Salvador; and following that you will be treated to a 
near view of sundry other outposts of the Bahama 
group, with finally a near view of Cape Maisi in 
Cuba. Unusually clear weather may even alford 



SAILING SOUTH 9 

a distant prospect of Haiti. Tlie Bermudas you will 
not see at all, unless you are going thither. 

Cape Hatteras, then, you must take on faith. 
Havana steamers commonly pass close to a light- 
ship that lies a long way east of the mainland ; but of 
the mainland itself you arc made aware only in case 
it happens to be one of Hatteras's moments for a 
meteorologic tantrum. It may be added also, for the 
reassurance of the timorous, that stormy times in 
these latitudes have a comfortable habit of ending 
as suddenly as they begin — although this may not 
be relied upon as the invariable rule. A blow that 
has kept an entire ship's company below at break- 
fast may abate and bring all hands merrily to dinner. 

In any case the third day ought to find people 
appearing in their summer gear. If three degrees of 
latitude will, as some wise man once remarked, 
"reverse all jurisprudence," they will work even 
greater wonders with the winter climate. New York, 
choked with snow, only increases the miracle of that 
third day — or at all events the fourth — when one 
is sailing a summer sea near shores begirt with palm, 
through school upon school of flying fish. The 
flannels and Palm Beach suits which seemed such 
absurdities in New York are absurdities no longer. 

As for the flying fish, they are among the tradi- 
tional allurements of the southern voyage. One is 



lo SAILING SOUTH 

amazed to find them so tiny, so swallow-like, so 
incredibly numerous, so capable of sustained flight. 
Blase travelers will ask you to believe that you will 
tire of them in a little time — but this is a thumping 
untruth. You never really tire of flying fish. You be- 
come accustomed to them; but you will blister the 
back of your devoted neck standing in the prow to 
see the diminutive creatures go skimming away 
across the waves from the intrusion of the onrushing 
stem, scales gleaming in the sun, and grace un- 
speakable in every movement which so strongly 
recalls the skipping stones of one's childhood. By 
comparison with the flying fish, the floating sea- 
weeds, once so comforting to Columbus and his 
crews, lack power to enthrall. They will undoubt- 
edly have the effect, however, of producing much 
energetic speculation as to the Sargasso Sea — an- 
other of those comfortable sea mysteries so alluring 
to the imaginations of the First Cabin, which has 
heard of the Sargasso Sea without being very sure 
where it is, and of the Spanish Main without being 
altogether certain of the location of that. In sailing 
south you are venturing upon a romantic belt of 
our earth, where Pieces of Eight are vaguely sup- 
posed to be the ruling currency, and where a mul- 
titude of half-forgotten traditions stimulate the 
imagination to flights of fancy which often break 



SAILING SOUTH ii 

every established record for altitude among a prop- 
erly stimulated smoke-room gathering. 

By the fifth day out it is high time to begin dis- 
cussions as to the trade winds, since the compara- 
tively steady northeast breeze is due to be en- 
countered at this juncture and is destined to become 
a daily familiar while you remain in the northerly 
verges of the torrid zone. This in its turn is certain 
to be productive of much pseudo-science among the 
deck-chairs — trade winds, their cause and cure, 
periodicity, perpetuity, effect upon marine and 
terrestrial weather, rainy seasons, and so on, af- 
fording virtually unlimited material for polite con- 
versation among holiday-makers, to whom the 
tropics are an uncharted and fascinating domain. 
It will suffice here to remark that the northeast 
trade wind is no myth, is practically regular in its 
operation throughout the year, is prone to blow 
chiefly by day, and tends to make the Caribbean a 
bumpy but not commonly an unpleasant sea. 

Like so many other things, steamship lines to the 
tropics have suffered from the effects of the war 
and may not at present be said to be in a normal 
condition of excellence. A few years ought to cure 
that, however. Diversion of the wonted craft to 
the purposes of transport for men and materials has 
wrought changes which the incessant rush of post- 



12 SAILING SOUTH 

war business has left no opportunity to repair. 
Now and again wandering U-boats took toll even 
on our coasts, and at least one of the Porto Rico 
liners was sent to the bottom by a torpedo in the 
full tide of the submarine destruction. Neverthe- 
less one may be reasonably comfortable on a south- 
ern cruise, in almost any season, by the regular 
ships; and of course the special cruises during the 
winter months offer luxury surpassing what one 
looks for in a regular voyage devoted chiefly to 
trading in bananas and other tropical commodities. 
But the effects of the war were not altogether 
deleterious. For one thing, Europe being closed to 
the tourist, the tropics suddenly revealed possibili- 
ties for such as regard the ideal vacation to be that 
which involves a sea voyage. The dimly appre- 
ciated attractions of the warm countries have be- 
come a vivid reality to thousands, and the ultimate 
effect beyond question will be a great advance both 
in the means of transport and in the excellence of 
the accommodations ashore. Even to-day there is 
an agreeable primitiveness in the latter, once you 
get away from the principal centers of population 
in tropic islands or on the mainland of Central 
America ; but in such considerable cities as Havana, 
San Juan, Kingston, Port Antonio, and the two 
main stations of the Canal Zone, there are already 



SAILING SOUTH 13 

hotels meriting the description "luxurious" and 
even the less-frequented sites afford very tolerable 
comfort. The effect of certain other novel elements, 
such as the recent establishment of American pro- 
hibition, need hardly be stressed. In that direction 
a variety of choice is possible — between such cities 
as Havana, where gayety rules supreme, and where 
the concomitants of a lively life are most in evi- 
dence, and such towns as San Juan or those of the 
Zone, which adhere to the austere American habit 
now so much in vogue. 

There are those who claim that at any season, 
even the northern midsummer, a journey to the 
tropics is both comfortable and rewarding. The 
wiser custom, however, confines the pleasure- 
seeker to the six months between November and 
May. It is entirely true that in the torrid zone the 
temperature varies but little with the seasons, if 
you trust entirely to the thermometer. But there 
are certain other elements to be borne in mind, 
such as the brief intermissions in the blowing of the 
trade winds, the concentrated seasons of humidity 
in which rain is the daily occurrence, and above all 
the fact that one going south in our own summer- 
time experiences no reactions due to climatic dif- 
ferences between the tropics and home. Our north- 
ern summer, indeed, is often hotter — for a very 



14 SAILING SOUTH 

brief period — than the tropic summer. Alaska 
may have isolated days of greater heat than Kings- 
ton or Colon. The sensible time to go to the warm 
areas of the earth is when the glass rules around 
zero in New England and New York. To exchange 
cold for heat is wisdom. To voyage from one hot 
climate to another which, to say the least, will not 
be much cooler, is folly. 

The Antilles, one must always remember, are not 
by any means an equatorial group of islands. Even 
Panama lies some nine degrees north of our earth's 
capacious waist-line, and Havana is only about 
one hundred miles south of Florida; so that there 
is still room for some solar variations in that 
region, even when one has passed below the Tropic 
of Cancer, although their effect upon the temper- 
ature is not greatly marked. It is always warm 
there — hot, in fact — save in the highlands, which 
are by contrast reasonably cool. It is usually cool 
enough for comfort, even on the coasts, by night. 
Veracious young men, long resident in Panama, 
have told me that they invariably sought a light 
blanket for covering before morning throughout 
the year, thanks to the steadiness of the nocturnal 
breeze. Admittedly, however, you would not freeze 
without one — but what would you? The object in 
going to the tropics is to find tropical conditions; 



SAILING SOUTH 15 

and in midwinter such conditions are paradisiacal 
to all but those hardy souls who must choose Jan- 
uary for their expeditions into Labrador and the 
region of Hudson's Bay. 

By the expenditure of six days in time and a 
reasonable amount of money It is wholly possible to 
exchange the extreme rigors of the northern winter 
for the delights of a land where it is always a sort 
of summer afternoon, and where the conditions of 
living are so different as to produce that desirable 
effect upon habits, customs, architecture, language, 
and complexion which forms the great attraction 
In going anywhere "abroad." To get away from 
home for a space — away from home ways of doing 
things, home standards, home speech, home people 
— is of the essence of travel for many of us and Is 
what chiefly militates against that otherwise meri- 
torious slogan "See America first." Havana is the 
most completely "foreign" city that could be con- 
ceived — and yet it lies only a few hours' steaming 
from the southern end of the Key West viaduct. 
Cuba, Porto Rico, and the countries of Central 
America are outposts of ancient Spain, where 
Spanish Is still a very desirable language to have 
at one's command. The fact of its long possession 
by England Is the chief handicap against Jamaica 
and the other scattered British possessions of the 



i6 SAILING SOUTH 

Caribbean, because, while otherwise among the 
loveliest of all earthly paradises, such do away with 
the illusion of foreignness, both in speech and in- 
stitutions, which is so ardently coveted by the 
sight-seeing American. 

One obsessed by the passion for imparting help- 
ful hints to the inexperienced is sorely tempted to 
embellish an introduction like this with needless 
advice. Let it be said only that in a country where 
it is usually about 90° in the shade at noon and some- 
thing over 60° at night, and where in addition it 
very frequently pours with rain, common sense 
should afford the safest guide as to the equipment 
of the transitory guest. All the lightest clothing 
you can find, a gossamer raincoat, and an umbrella 
are clearly indicated, as the doctors say. The straw 
hat of the tropics is abundant and inexpensive — 
so that might as well be purchased on arrival. 

Meantime, do not expect too much — because 
you cannot! 



CHAPTER II 
AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 

PROBABLY every one has in his or her head a 
tolerably vague map of such portions of the 
earth as are reasonably familiar — "tolerably 
vague" being said with reason and by design. By 
the light of this mental atlas one has an indefinite 
sense of geography as a sort of glittering generality, 
with certain bench-marks to which dependable 
reference may be made, but with very little else 
that is accurate behind it. 

Therefore it is likely that every one visualizes 
the Antilles as a roughly semi-circular group of 
islands, mostly small and apparently lying in close 
proximity to one another, their line extending from 
the toe of Florida down to the huge shoulder of the 
South American continent and sufficing to contain 
the body of water known to all mankind as the 
Caribbean Sea. The notable regularity of this 
group in the matter of curvature and alignment 
and the fact that, together with the peninsula of 
Yucatan and the long curve of the Central Ameri- 
can mainland, a fairly symmetrical ellipse is pro 
duced on the charts, must stamp the image on even 
the most casual observer. 



i8 SAILING SOUTH 

The ordinary recollection will instantly place 
Cuba at the upper end of this curving archipelago, 
partly because it is the largest of the entire group, 
partly because it lies nearest us, and more especially, 
perhaps, because certain events in 1898 forced us 
to take a direct personal cognizance of this great 
but previously little considered island. I venture 
the guess, however, that at this point the average 
man's knowledge ceases to be definite. Until one 
ventures into the locality and is compelled to learn 
a little more clearly just where Haiti and Porto 
Rico are, their exact locus is but dimly sensed. 
And as for such fascinating names as Trinidad, 
Barbados, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Tobago, Martin- 
ique — well, they are names and naught else. Not 
many could take a blank map of the West Indies 
and write in the names of the various islands in 
the so-called "Windward" and "Leeward" groups 
with any certainty. Most of us could identify the 
few that are large enough to have distinctive shapes; 
but on any ordinary atlas the vast majority of the 
islets are mere dots, signifying nothing. No doubt 
upon more intimate association the mystery van- 
ishes. It takes a very meager acquaintance with 
tropic travel to isolate and identify Jamaica as the 
errant brother — the island that has somehow got 
out of line and wandered off into the Caribbean 



AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 19 

south of Cuba, aloof from the others and giving the 
general effect of being just a trifle superior. The 
rest simply sweep in one gigantic curve from the 
northern to the southern continent — evidently a 
long, submerged mountain range logically corre- 
lated, the peaks being the several islands, but all 
remote enough from the everyday concerns of men 
to be nameless each. 

The recent acquisition of the several small 
islands of the Virgin group, which our country 
bought from Denmark within a very brief space of 
time, has begun somewhat to reduce the mystery. 
Many, if not most of us, now place them without 
effort as lying next east of Porto Rico, and with the 
increasing vogue of southern sailing it is wholly 
probable that they will become goals of visitation. 
Their various names, referring to certain saints of 
high repute, are dimly recalled — St. Thomas espe- 
cially. But aside from the fact that they are islands 
famous for bay rum and tidal waves, the ordinary 
American still pays them too little heed. Martin- 
ique achieved a transitory celebrity not many years 
ago by reason of a fearful volcanic eruption. Trini- 
dad, lying far to the south, seems to be suggestive 
of asphaltic pavement. The rest connote noth- 
ing in particular save the vague notion of waving 
palms, slothful negroes, odd tropical fruits, and 



20 SAILING SOUTH 

early venturings on the part of buccaneers from 
Spain. 

The designations of the Windward and Leeward 
groups will hazily suggest that they lie somehow 
with reference to prevailing winds — but even after 
you have gone there the exact reason escapes you. 
The wind certainly does "prevail" with a vengeance 
— a stiff northeast breeze which must necessarily 
have its counterpart somewhere. But the leeward 
islands seem distressingly windward ones if you 
view them from the right angle. 

It is not the intent of this book to deal with the 
minor members of the Antillean archipelago. Let 
us be content, like George Sampson on a famous 
occasion, to "know that they are there" and con- 
tinue to know them vaguely as the huge natural 
breakwater enclosing the Caribbean Sea — a break- 
water which does not make the Caribbean a shel- 
tered sheet of water by any means, but on the con- 
trary a distinctly bumpy and usually a trying one 
to such as experience disquiet when they go down 
to the sea in ships. One cannot expect aught else of 
a sea where the wind blows day in and day out 
from the same direction with an intensity that is 
reasonably constant. After all it is the trade wind 
that makes the tropical islands tolerable places of 
resort. Without it, they would be wretchedly hot, 



AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 21 

winter and summer alike. With it, they have their 
allurements. The northernmost ones — Cuba, Haiti, 
and Porto Rico — are places of delight at the proper 
seasons — not too tropical, but just tropical enough. 
The shape of Cuba, the greatest of them all, 
somehow suggests, and not inappropriately, a cor- 
nucopia. Haiti seems rather like the head of a 
weary old man, yawning capaciously in the direc- 
tion of the setting sun. Porto Rico invariably re- 
minds me, with its curiously regular outline, of our 
old-fashioned pastime of trying to draw a pig with 
one's eyes shut. Jamaica is sufficiently like unto it 
to be its twin. And yet, as you go from one island 
to another, you will probably be struck by the fact 
that islands so near allied in point of geography are 
arrestingly different — different in vegetation, dif- 
ferent in atmosphere, above all different in people. 
The latter, however, is a natural consequence of 
history. Jamaica has been British ever since Crom- 
well. Cuba was Spanish down to a quarter-century 
ago and probably will continue Spanish throughout 
all time. Haiti and Santo Domingo — none of us 
can say where the one leaves off and the other be- 
gins on their common insularity — seem to be in- 
curably negroid. Porto Rico manfully strives to be 
American, but is as Spanish as a tortilla still. Cuba, 
in a proper wind, can be bleak and almost cold ; for 



22 SAILING SOUTH 

outwardly Cuba is the least tropical to the inquiring 
eye of the tourist. 

It is much the same, I fear, on the mainland side 
of the Caribbean. We all know very well where 
Mexico is — almost too well, perhaps. But what 
happens when you get below Mexico? Can you 
bound the various free and independent countries 
loosely known in popular speech and in the public 
prints as the " Latin- American republics"? The 
names you probably know. The exact order in 
which they come and the relations which the several 
republics bear to one another you most probably 
do not know with anything like certainty. The 
reason is presumably that it has n't interested you 
to make this knowledge your own, despite the ef- 
forts of zealous persons headed by the Honorable 
John Barrett during many years to create an 
entente cordiale between the United States and the 
numerous states to which we stand, whether they 
like it or not, in loco parentis. Not many of us are 
aware of the situation or general shape of, say, 
Salvador, or Honduras. The names are apt to 
connote such incongruities as earthquakes, ma- 
hogany, and revolutions. 

It will not be ever thus, but it is so now. To 
adopt the frequent phrase of politicians and cham- 
bers of commerce, these Latin-American countries 



AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 23 

"have a future before them." For the moment they 
are not quite in the way of realizing it, being largely 
undeveloped, ill-provided with roads, almost un- 
provided with rail transport, and altogether too 
abundantly equipped with the regnant spirit of 
revolt. But the materials of a future are there, 
prepared, no doubt, from the beginning of the world. 
Deep in the jungle lie ruins that indicate the pos- 
session of a monumental past, as well, suggesting 
infinite speculations as to the ancient course of 
empire. Archaeology has a stake in the Latin-Amer- 
icas as surely as have commerce and trade. But 
one has first to subdue nature, overcome the jungle, 
triumph over the Latin temperament — and all 
those things are hard. 

Nevertheless they are not impossibilities. By 
dint of cutting a Gordian knot with a not too lovely 
blow, and by the exercise of ingenuity in sanitary 
engineering, Panama has been put distinctly on the 
map. Those who remember the hell-hole that was 
once Aspinwall must marvel at the health and 
prosperity of Cristobal and Colon. But in that case 
the need of the canal was the incentive, and similar 
incentives have not arisen farther north. The con- 
quest of other localities has been left to merchant 
adventurers in quest of bananas, lumber, and 
minerals, or to railroad concessionnaires hampered 



24 SAILING SOUTH 

now and again by changing political fortunes in the 
countries granting the concession. Panama, much 
to the disquiet of the great and friendly nation of 
Colombia, became an affair of national magnitude; 
and the miracle that happened there, despite cer- 
tain qualms as to the manner of its doing, has prob- 
ably impressed every American who has visited the 
Isthmus with an entirely new idea of the power and 
resourcefulness of his own countrymen. It is not 
the purpose of the present chapter to reopen the 
vexed questions that beset the acquisition of title 
to the Canal Zone and the separation of Panama 
from its parent country, or to argue the possible 
proposition of a right of international eminent do- 
main. Progress sometimes has to be made at the 
expense of scruple; is usually cruel in raw nature, 
and not infrequently is so in art. 

We have come thus far, then, that there lies to 
the south of us by less than a week's steaming a 
great sea enclosed between lands whereof we are 
unpardonably ignorant; a sea that breathes ro- 
mance and lands the richness of which we are but 
dimly aware. Assuming as we have for a century 
or more the sole guardianship of this domain by 
sea and land, we are disgracefully ignorant of our 
wards. We are not trusted by them. And what is 
true of the restricted area known as Central Amer- 




IN CRISTOBAL 



AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 25 

ica is no less true of the gigantic continent that 
opens farther south to rival in immensity and possi- 
biHties that which we and the Canadians have made 
our own. A beginning, looking toward better under- 
standings and a livelier interest, has been made in 
the incomparable Pan-American palace, which is 
perhaps the finest modern building in Washington. 
But the most promising way of all to cement alli- 
ances and friendly intercourse is to go and see; for 
better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering 
of the desire. 

It should be understood first of all that the people 
of the Latin-Americas whenever prosperity permits 
seek either a European or American education ; that 
the cities, what few there are, present attractions 
not to be despised ; and above all that those inhab- 
iting the Latin- Americas are the direct inheritors of 
an ancient Spanish civilization, whereof the ways 
are not our ways, neither the thoughts our thoughts. 
It is necessary that we Americans cultivate a cer- 
tain adaptability, to which we seem but little prone, 
as the first step toward greater intimacy, and it 
follows that by no means all the work is to be done 
abroad. A measure, and an important measure, is 
to be done at home. Perhaps the first essential is a 
broadened knowledge, but certainly the second is 
enlighted patience. Our country is great, and it is 



26 SAILING SOUTH 

apparently too easy to awaken in the Latin breast 
a fear that we might turn out to be an overgrown 
bully. The liberation of Cuba has not altogether 
sufficed to offset Panama, and it is not yet revealed 
what Mexico has in store. 

Five years of war have done much to turn American 
interest in the direction of the Central American 
states, adding themselves to the lure of the great 
Canal. As a result many thousand of our people who 
formerly made holiday in Europe have during those 
five years discovered anew the sites first exploited by 
Columbus. Havana, San Juan, the Zone, and Costa 
Rica especially have suddenly become more familiar 
ground to many who formerly lavished their atten- 
tion on the other hemisphere. It has been discovered 
that these hot countries have their lure and that 
there is some practical geography to be studied 
nearer home. Some history also, for it seems true 
that we have all been taking Columbus and the 
early Spaniards rather too much for granted. This 
was their domain, the western terminus of the Silver 
Road. And while the vestiges of the early days are 
faint and often hard to find, many lie half buried 
in the forests, and the descendants of stout Cortez 
are all about. All this, however, relates to yesterday, 
comparatively speaking, since even Columbus came 
a scant four centuries ago. The really intriguing 



AROUND THE CARIBBEAN 27 

thing is the civilization which this portion of the 
world must have known in the unguessed ages be- 
fore the world-seeking Genoese pushed his way- 
overseas to the false Cathay. Evidently there was 
something there — and yet what do we know of it, 
behind 1492? Our earliest Egyptian date is some- 
thing more than 4000 B.C., and the world is reason- 
ably familiar with recorded history in that quarter 
since, say, the year 2500 before our Era. It is the 
Americas that are the real terra incognita, of whose 
past we have but the faintest glimmerings of knowl- 
edge. Aztec, Toltec, and Inca are names that recur 
from that far time when we were in school. So far as 
our own hemisphere is concerned we know less of its 
ninth century A.D. than we know of Egypt's nine- 
teenth century before Christ. Yet there are monu- 
ments in Mexico and in Guatemala indicative of a 
curious mixture of civilization and barbarism which 
may one day engross attention of American school- 
children — and add, alas, to the discouraging mass 
of material of which youth must learn ! 

However, all this is nothing that need hold us now. 
No one who fares southward on any ordinary cruise 
is at all likely to see anything of the ancient civiliza- 
tion, and will perceive but few evidences of the 
Spanish era. An ancient bridge in the jungle, a bit 
of roadway once traversed by ore-bearing carts, a 



28 SAILING SOUTH 

moss-grown cathedral here and there, numerous 
islands and "keys" where Columbus is credited 
either with having beached his ships for cleaning, or 
with having paused for water, will be all that recall 
the brave days of Ferdinand and the wide-ruling 
Philips. One's present concern is with bananas, 
cocoanuts, copra, logwood, and the score of other 
native products which give the steamer lines their 
excuse for being. Now as of old it is an industrial 
conquest; and that conquest, while not yet far 
advanced, has at least made its mark indelibly upon 
the tropics to the benefit alike of conquistado and 
conquistador. 



CHAPTER III 
HAVANA 

THE island of Cuba, largest and richest of the 
Greater Antilles, variously lauded as the Pearl 
of the Antilles and the Key of the New World, lies 
almost at our doors, a trifle over ninety miles from 
that curious Floridan appendage known as Key 
West, which Mr. Flagler's munificence has con- 
verted from an island to the prouder estate of a 
peninsula. Whatever may have been true of the 
elder days, it cannot be said that at present there is 
any pronounced indifference on the part of Ameri- 
cans to Havana — largely, one greatly fears, be- 
cause of reasons not unconnected with convivial 
cheer. Havana, which has known many vicissitudes, 
has not as yet embraced the stern doctrines origi- 
nally espoused by the late Neal Dow. She has sur- 
rendered nothing of her Latin heritage save only the 
scourge of yellow fever. She has consented to clean 
up and to stay clean. In all else she remains what 
she was before the Spanish War — a handsome town 
built along the shore of a landlocked harbor which 
has few rivals in the world and no superiors. 

In fact Cuba rejoices in harbors of a curiously 



30 SAILING SOUTH 

safe and capacious kind along practically all her 
coasts — and her coastline is no inconsiderable 
affair, being well over two thousand miles long if you 
count the numerous indentations. None of us, 
surely, can have forgotten the long and narrow inlet 
of Santiago in which Captain Hobson vainly at- 
tempted to imprison Cervera's fleet by sinking a 
collier across the channel — a glorious harbor which 
has several fellows along the southern shore. This 
fact, coupled with the development of railroad 
facilities throughout the length of the island and the 
steady growth of good roadways, suffices to give 
practically every cultivable portion of the island an 
easy access to the sea, which is of inestimable ad- 
vantage in the marketing of the products of the soil. 
Cuba^ is a much larger island than one commonly 

^ Cuba by the most recent census has a population of nearly three 
million. The republic is divided into six provinces of which Havana is 
at once the smallest in size and the largest in population. The gov- 
ernment vests in a president and vice-president, chosen by an electoral 
college; a cabinet of nine officers; and a legislature which boasts 
twenty-four senators (four from each province) and eighty-three 
representatives. The judges of the supreme and subordinate federal 
courts are named by the president subject to senatorial confirmation. 
Cuba's severance from Spain began with the opening of the Spanish- 
American War, April 21, 1898, and her independence became com- 
plete when in May, 1902, the American occupation ended and was 
succeeded by the first full administration of the Cuban Republic. 
The constitution, however, was formally adopted February 21, 1901, 
and an appendix was added in June of the same year embodying the 
so-called "Piatt Amendment," consisting of eight clauses which some- 
what restrict Cuban independence. By these clauses Cuba agrees not 



HAVANA 31 

realizes and its position is likewise but little under- 
stood. It will probably surprise one who has given 
the map little attention to be told that the eastern- 
most point of Cuba, Cape Maisi, lies directly south 
of New York, whereas the westernmost cape lies 
due south of Cincinnati — and it is further sur- 
prising to learn that the extreme length of the island 
is rather more than seven hundred miles. The cheer- 
ful habits of our geographers are responsible for 
much misconception of the relative sizes of things. 
Because the ordinary atlas places on one page a map 
of Cuba and on another a map of Massachusetts, 
one rather easily jumps to the erroneous conclusion 
that Cuba and Massachusetts must be about of a 
size. 

With all their energy it took the Spaniards about 
twenty years after the discoveries by Columbus to 

to enter into any treaties impairing her own independent status and 
not to permit foreign colonization or grant foreign naval or military 
privileges; that the Government shall not contract debts beyond the 
adequacy of the revenues; that the Government of the United States 
may intervene to preserve Cuban independence, or to insure the life, 
liberty, and property of individuals, or to safeguard other obligations, 
etc. Under this clause, owing to a violent rebellion in the island inci- 
dent to an election, the United States did intervene in 1906 and a 
virtual occupation continued until 1909, when it was deemed safe 
once more to withdraw the American troops. Subsequent disorders 
have been dealt with effectively by the Cuban authorities without 
further invocation of the Piatt Amendment. Sugar and sugar products 
form three quarters of the export trade of the island; tobacco figures 
at about sixteen per cent of the total; and fruits, coffee, cocoa, min- 
erals, etc., supply the remainder. 



32 SAILING SOUTH 

plant settlements on the coasts of Cuba, but when 
they came they came thick and fast. The sheltered 
climate and the available harbors naturally led to the 
first settlement of the southern coast and as a matter 
of fact the original Havana was located there. But 
the discovery of a still better harbor on the north- 
ern side soon changed all that, and the Havana that 
we know promptly supplanted San Cristobal de la 
Habana, assuming a strategic importance easy to 
comprehend because of its command of the narrow 
straits between Cuba and the Florida keys. Indeed, 
this importance was self -destructive on at least two 
occasions, for successive incursions of buccaneers 
put Havana to the torch with the idea of getting rid 
of the meddlesome place. This, however, merely 
insured the heavier fortification of the city; and by 
1600, a score of years before the landing of the Pil- 
grims in New England, the grim fortress on the point, 
now famous the world over as the Morro Castle, had 
been begun. 

Little enough was done for many years by way of 
exploiting the natural fertility of the island, Spain 
preferring the quest for precious ores in a not un- 
natural desire — not yet extinct among men — to 
"get rich quick." Havana was the chief gateway to 
the unknown — the port where expeditions for pur- 
poses of exploration were fitted out. Such hardy 



HAVANA 33 

pioneers as De Soto made it their base. Tardily* 
indeed, did Spain abandon the hope of finding silver 
and gold; but when she suddenly recognized the 
incomparable fertility of the Cuban soil, she carried 
thither sugar cane from the Canaries and thereby 
opened up an industry which in a brief time put the 
mining operations to sleep. Cuba became valuable, 
not for what was dug out of the soil, but for what 
was put into it. The native Indian stock being all 
but exterminated by this time, slave labor from 
Africa was brought in — thus mingling curses with 
blessings in the usual human way. 

Apart from a quaintly incongruous interval, dur- 
ing which Cuba was actually conquered and held in 
subjection by English and American colonial troops 
under Albemarle (1762-63), Cuba has been incurably 
Spanish. Nothing was then heard of any revolt 
against the rule of the Most Catholic Kings; and 
when Havana discovered in 1808 that one Napoleon 
had impiously overthrown the reigning Spanish 
dynasty at Madrid, Cuba promptly declared war 
on Napoleon! Fourscore years later, however, the 
"ever faithful" island had learned a different tune. 
Revolution, with all its attendant horrors of "re- 
concentration camps" and other repressive schemes 
of Captain-General Weyler, led swiftly to the inter- 
vention of America, the conquest of Cuba, the peace 



34 SAILING SOUTH 

with Spain, and the ultimate independence of the 
insular republic — independence with, it is true, a 
few salutary strings to it in the shape of the half- 
forgotten but still vital "Piatt Amendment," 
whereby it is incumbent upon Cuba to behave, to 
keep clean, to pay her debts, and to keep European 
hands off. 

Whether or not Cuba truly loves the United 
States it would be rash to say. Appearances indi- 
cate a genuine appreciation. Monuments commem- 
orating the salutary deeds of the Americans under 
General Wood adorn the Prado, and above all the 
Cubans have learned that to be clean, decent, and 
reasonably law-abiding actually pays. Nevertheless 
there is bound to be some latent restiveness under 
the feeling that there is a shadowy sort of guard- 
ianship lurking behind the freedom — a certain 
resentment of the feeling that always attends a 
"Thou shalt not," even though the prohibition be 
for one's admitted good. 

Mountainous to west and south, Cuba is visible 
from afar to the eye of faith. Viewed from a remote 
but approaching ship, every island is likely to seem 
at first a cloud. Dispute is certain to arise among 
those who see it and those who do not. But such dis- 
putes have the merit of solving themselves in a very 
brief interval of time in favor of the sharper- visioned. 



HAVANA 35 

That long blue cloud, half visible on the horizon, 
turns out to be land after all. Ships are seen to be 
converging upon it. Trailing smokes from deep 
glens in the hillsides betoken the burning of the 
refuse of plantations. That white splash on the 
landscape at the water's edge must be Havana — a 
name that instantly suggests the aroma of a billion 
boxes of incomparable cigars. 

My own first view of Havana came at a fortu- 
nate hour — that just preceding sunset on a day of 
indescribable beauty. For two days it had been fine, 
and the dirty weather of the northern latitudes had 
been forgotten. The previous evening we had 
skirted the Florida coast, well inshore to avoid the 
thrust of the Gulf Current — a thoroughly flat, 
stale, and unprofitable Florida coast, relieved of 
utter monotony only by the garish lights of Palm 
Beach. That notable retreat we passed In the 
dark, so close at hand that hardened travelers on 
deck affected to pick out definite objects, such as 
hotels and a single errant trolley-car. That super- 
latively honest mariner, the chief officer, persuaded 
two innocent maiden ladies of uncertain age that the 
planet Venus was the light of an airplane, which he 
said made nightly voyages for the delectation of 
holiday-making millionaires, and he called atten- 
tion to the fact that it was actually following us 



36 SAILING SOUTH 

along. So it did — night after night, and all the way 
to Panama; but for the moment it was unquestion- 
ingly accepted as an airship and much exclamation 
at its steady flight might be heard well into the 
evening. 

Then came the cloudless dawn, the early glimpses 
of the Key West viaduct, and a day of ploughing 
through a summer sea — until at last, just as light 
was failing, we entered the narrow gut between the 
Morro and the city. 

I have seen many harbors in this hemisphere and 
the other, but I am persuaded that not one of them 
is lovelier than that of Havana, as a matter of ap- 
proaches. It is a surprising place. You come up to 
within a mile or so before you really see what It is 
like, and then you perceive that a narrow inlet be- 
tween two forts opens into a broad and well-pro- 
tected inner basin. Cuba Is high and bold enough to 
be seen afar. We made it out in the early afternoon. 
But Havana itself we did not uncover until just as 
the sun was sinking in an incredible glory, shedding 
a mellow light over the western sea and gilding the 
water-front of the gleaming city with a beauty 
hardly to be described. Across the golden path of 
the sun there loafed a leisurely schooner, outward 
bound. Ashore the lights began to twinkle from the 
rocks. Street after street flashed into long strings 



HAVANA 37 

of twinkling gems as if by magic. Still it was not 
yet night — only the dusk of a summer's day. It 
seemed a toy town, spreading far along the margin 
of the bay and wandering off inland to the hills. 
On the port bow loomed the ancient fortress of the 
Morro Castle with its tower — a faded old fort, rose- 
pink in the light of that marvelous afterglow, and 
crowned with its grim lighthouse whereon I was 
speedily able to make out in bold letters that valiant 
and highly Spanish name, O'Donnell ! I felt at home 
at once, of course. But why O'Donnell? 

Well, it seems that Leopold O'Donnell, Duke of 
Tetuan, was governor-general of Cuba in 1843, and 
I suppose he got his name tattooed on the Morro 
while he was in residence. You will also find streets 
named for him all over Old Spain itself, for he was a 
valiant fighter as became one of that lineage. Orig- 
inally, no doubt, his family was Irish, although he 
himself was born in Teneriffe and died in France. 
Nor was he the only Irish association to be met with 
in Havana, for the second of the two chief commer- 
cial streets later turned out to be named O'Reilly, 
heavily disguised in the local pronunciation as 
Oh-ray-eel-yeh. A genuine Irishman he was, born in 
Dublin and long antedating O'Donnell as a soldier 
of fortune in Most Catholic Spain, for he flourished 
between 1725 and 1794. In the 1760's he served as 



38 SAILING SOUTH 

governor in Havana and still later held sway in 
Louisiana. Thus early did the Irish come to their 
own! 

Through a constricted strait that seemed barely 
wide enough to let us pass we steamed to the inner 
bay and dropped anchor not far from the spot where 
the Maine was destroyed. By a coincidence a grim 
United States naval vessel was anchored there — 
the Montana — and from her decks came the ani- 
mated music of the ship's band, obedient to that 
famous naval rule, "the band shall play while 
coaling ship." On either shore the white city faded 
away into the darkness of a balmy night, picked out 
in glittering rows of lights. Ferries plied to and fro. 
The donkey-engines started their clanking chorus, 
and then — "All passengers to the dining-saloon 
or the doctor, please!" Oh, dear! 

Of course it's a matter of form. The doctor has to 
be passed. So you must go down and sit in a most 
depressing silence waiting for him — the hushed 
stillness broken only by the voice of some wag, who 
remarks after a painful interval, "What a dressy 
funeral!" Thereupon we all laugh and feel better. 
But there are always half a dozen passengers who 
cannot be found and who have to be chased through 
the ship, from garboard strake to maintruck — what- 
ever those are. Eventually they are herded in, 



HAVANA 39 

cursed sotto voce by sweating stewards and more 
audibly by the impatient passengers who were 
prompt. And now, behold, the doctor cometh also 
— a squat, fierce-looking Spaniard. He walks up 
and down, glaring terribly. In some previous in- 
carnation he must have been a basilisk. If looks could 
kill, you would die. You can see the dotted lines 
running from his eyes. His glance falls on you, and 
you quake. Can it be that you look ill? You cer- 
tainly feel kind of queer! But no! He passes on, 
still glowering fearfully, and finally he shouts in 
one heart-arresting moment those blessed words, 
now common to every tongue — "All raight!" 
You can go ashore — that is, you can in the sweet 
by-and-by. The immigration authorities have got 
to have a fresh look at you first, and then they 've 
got to dock the ship. Of course you stand around 
impatiently and swear at the delays — but by 
another hour you are free; you dash through the 
spicy aroma of the great dock; you hail a ten-cent 
cab, and rattle off through those quaint stage-setting 
streets to a shore hotel. Dinner on land seems an 
entrancing prospect, after four days of ship's food — 
albeit ship's food is pretty good. 

Fleeting touristical experiences such as mine do 
not entitle one to speak with the authority of an 
expert, but rather as one of the scribes. Neverthe- 



40 SAILING SOUTH 

less I am anxious to say at once that I liked Havana. 
To be sure, we saw it on the first day under rather 
restricted circumstances, because it happened to be 
on February 24 — in other words, the equivalent of 
July 4 in Cuba Libre. NatuVlly things were shut up 
and the streets presented long arrays of blank win- 
dows. The world was at play. Yet there was no 
unseemly din. I heard a few firecrackers popping. 
I saw no feux d 'artifice. There were horse-races at 
the great track at Marianao which were said to be 
splendid, and no doubt there were also cock-fights 
for those who would see. But for the most part 
Havana seemed to be taking a nap — with the 
advantage that it was amply hot enough to warrant 
any one in seeking a secluded shade to sleep. 

Occupying a curving water-front, Havana is easy 
to get lost in. You soon lose your bearings, much as 
the untutored do in circular Boston. The streets 
are very narrow — many of them "one-way" thor- 
oughfares — and the sidewalks are mere ribbons. 
But these same streets are, so far as I had a chance 
to examine them, admirably clean. Indeed, the 
cleanliness of everything struck me as beyond 
praise. It was not ever thus. General Wood was the 
man who made Havana a spotless town and con- 
verted it from a plague-spot to a paradise — and his 
fame is preserved, as I have said before, by a tablet 



HAVANA 41 

in the handsome Prado boulevard. Better still, the 
Cubans appear not to have lapsed from what Gen- 
eral Wood taught them. They keep clean. Every- 
day is clean-up day in Havana. Now and then, to 
be sure, the dreaded bubonic breaks out in the lower 
areas by the water-front, but it is soon curbed. 
Vessels lying at the pier wear great tin collars on 
their hawsers to prevent the entrance of wharf-rats 
bearing noxious fleas. 

Narrow streets go with hot climates. There is sure 
to be a shady side, and the sun's penetrations to the 
pavement are brief. The Havana architecture is 
European rather than American — I should say it 
was Spanish if I knew for certain that there was such 
a thing. Especially in the case of the cathedral is 
this a permissible remark, for that ancient and noble 
edifice is as Spanish as you please, outwardly. In- 
wardly it is at once not Spanish and most disap- 
pointing. One sees it best from the tiny square out- 
side, whence it is a pure delight. Its mammoth bells, 
hung in tower-niches much too small for them, add 
to the charm. 

Time was when it sheltered the reputed bones of 
Columbus — although the identity alike of the 
casket and of its occupant has been disputed. The 
tomb is empty now, and the supposed Columbus 
rests in a gaudy catafalque in the huge cathedral of 



42 SAILING SOUTH 

Seville, borne aloft by four grotesque images which 
I could wish I had never seen. Little is left to make 
the denuded Havana cathedral famous, save its 
fagade, some marvelous vestments, and an alleged 
Murillo. 

Down through the midst of the town there runs 
a broad thoroughfare cut in twain throughout its 
course by a green parkway. This is the Prado, 
highly suggestive of the celebrated Ramblas of Bar- 
celona. Up and down its shaded walks pass the peo- 
ple of the city. Its sides are lined with thoroughly 
handsome buildings, chiefly white. The procession 
of Fords is interminable. Open carriages are steadily 
wending their way hither and yon. Those .marked 
with a splash of red paint on the lanterns are open 
to hire for ten cents; the others double. Very proba- 
bly the price has advanced, however, since this was 
written. Carnages are cheap in Havana — and so 
are cigars; but nothing else. Complaint of the ex- 
pensiveness of Havana hotels was to be heard on 
every hand even three or four years ago; and it 
seems rather too bad that it should be so, because 
Havana has a glorious chance to attract tourist 
trade, now that the world is upset. 

At the foot of the Prado, next the sea, is the 
"Malecon" — a broad park where the band plays 
of an evening. You may hire an iron chair for five 




Copyright by Pvblishers Photo Service, N. Y, 

THE CATHEDRAL, HAVANA 



HAVANA 43 

cents and enjoy the balmy air and music until very 
late. In the intervals between selections there is 
always the rhythmic wash of the sea, beating cease- 
lessly against ancient walls that time has mildewed 
and made splendid. The grim tower of the Morro 
winks its vigilant eye at you from across the strait. 
Here of a truth is Europe, and only four days from 
New York at that — or even in less time -by rail and 
water combined. Given better hotels — and these 
are coming fast now — Havana will mint gold out 
of her manifold beauties as the older world has done. 
For she is beautiful with the rich dower that gilds 
Palermo, and Seville, and Granada, and so many 
other ancient towns for the voyagers from the 
frozen North. 

One is told, indeed, that the town runs "wide 
open," and that a recent chief of police was mur- 
dered as he sat in his carriage because he had 
sought to close the gambling-hells. Later, they 
say, his assailant was released from prison and was 
escorted in triumph through the Prado by a jubi- 
lant mob. It need not concern you, however, for of 
the seamy side of Havana sporting life you will see 
nothing outwardly. I saw no drunkenness in my 
brief stay. I was impressed with the ubiquity of 
the police and the modern trafhc-handling at con- 
gested corners. I was also impressed — and de- 



44 SAILING SOUTH 

lighted — by the universality of admirable tobacco. 
Why not? Is not Havana the cigar capital of the 
universe? Nowhere grows there tobacco to be 
compared with that of the vuelta abajo! Nowhere 
else is it so plentiful, or so cheap. You must seek 
out a fruit stand — but tobacco is ever at your 
elbow. You will recklessly buy a twenty-five cent 
cigar in Havana, just because it is the same sort 
that would cost you fifty cents in New York. As 
for those unusual smokes that you permit yourself 
in moments of wild extravagance at home — the 
kind that in normal times retail for fifteen or 
twenty cents straight — these are the daily prov- 
ender of the proletariat! So you revel in them 
and, of course, you load your trunk for import 
when you sail away. For our Government will let 
you bring in fifty cigars duty free — and it will not 
question the right of your lady wife to bring in 
another fifty also, assuming that she intends to 
smoke them herself, no doubt. 

I went to a cigar factory, of course. To omit that 
would be like going to Paris and missing the Louvre. 
It was a huge four-story block, with magnificent 
offices below and workrooms of vast extent above. 
Several hundred men were rolling cigars of various 
kinds, smoking the while and giving the appearance 
of not being too clean. Occasionally there is a 



HAVANA 45 

lofty desk from which a reader intones the news 
of the day. But it was not the rolling, so much as 
the sorting processes, that interested me. Weary- 
looking women fished the cured leaves out of great 
tubs and laid them with unerring dexterity each in 
its appropriate pile according to the color. Weary- 
looking men took great trays of finished cigars and 
sorted them, likewise by color, with equally un- 
erring dexterity. Others prepared the raw boxes, 
into which still others laid the completed product, 
all nicely banded and jacketed and just the tightest 
kind of a fit. Even a non-smoker's mouth would 
water at this sight, and Katrina, who usually re- 
gards tobacco as a monster of most frightful mien, 
was moved first to endure, then pity, then invest. 
What pretty names they have, too! Who shall re- 
sist the music of "Colorado maduro," "exception- 
ales," " regalias," and their train? The man or the 
woman who can go through a Cuban cigar emporium 
unmoved is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. 
On a fleeting and altogether torrid motor ride 
through the environing country we saw some to- 
bacco growing — but it is n't much to see. I so- 
berly asked the austere young man who guided us 
if he could n't show me a plant "with the little 
cigars just forming" — but he looked at me as if I 
must be a most unusual ass. 



46 SAILING SOUTH 

The really interesting things, apart from the 
cigars, are the old things — the quaint streets, the 
old fortresses of Morro and Cabanas. The average 
native cicerone, however, does n't grasp that. He 
wants you to see the modern progress. He shows 
you the cement factories, the waterworks, and 
what he calls the "lu-nattick asylum." He reels 
off statistics like a Chamber of Commerce. Why 
should you want to see a smelly old place like 
Morro Castle? Far better see a sugar mill! But in 
the process you do manage to squeeze in a few 
miles of pleasant country road through sugar plan- 
tations and tobacco farms, where palms and cocoa- 
nuts line the way. You are surprised to find that 
Cuba in February is n't a lush garden of the Lord, 
but is actually dusty, and in places rather bare and 
brown. 

How it may be in the rest of the island I cannot 
say, but if you stick to Havana you will probably 
conclude that the Cubans are n't doing a half-bad 
job with their newly acquired liberty. They have a 
fine town and it is annually improving. I should 
like to live in the Vedado district myself, in a cool, 
white, deep-verandaed house looking out on the 
broad blue gulf. 

They got us back on the ship at 4 p.m. "to see the 
doctor." We were supposed to sail at 5. What we 



HAVANA 47 

actually did was to lie there all night at the pier 
unloading steel beams, with periodic crashes and 
loud yells from the stevedores, until 6.30 the next 
morning. Somehow or other I managed to fall into 
a fitful slumber in the early morning watch, to 
dream of Hendryk Hudson playing at gigantic 
ninepins among the hills; and through the mist of 
those dreams I vaguely heard the mate calling 
lustily to the lighterman — 

"Hi, there, Jesus-Maria! How many more bun- 
dles you got to take out?" 

"Eighteen, sah!" 

And shortly after the piously named Maria de- 
parted with his deckload of heavy hardware, leav- 
ing behind him a holy calm. The engine telegraph 
rang a merry peal, the screws turned, and Havana 
began to slip silently away from us. By eight bells 
it was a memory. The reality was a blue and boister- 
ous sea, stirred to life by a brisk nor'wester from the 
distant Texas coast. 



CHAPTER IV 
PANAMA AND THE CANAL 

WITH the memory fresh upon me of that 
night of cacophonous horrors, due to the 
unloading of innumerable steel girders, I sought out 
the purser in the morning to tell him that, like 
Mr. Dooley, I had determined what to do the next 
time I felt moved to travel. I should " throw two 
hundred dollars out of the window, put a cinder in 
my eye, and go to sleep on a shelf in a boiler- works." 
But I really expected no pity from him. Pursers 
are a callous lot. He merely directed my attention 
to the present beauties of the sea, billowing bluely 
under a stiff nor'wester, and to the myriad flying 
fish that forever started up out of the water and 
went winging over the surface like skipping stones. 
That night we rounded the western capes of 
Cuba and headed for Colon and the Canal. The 
next day and the day following we steamed through 
the Caribbean under a tropic sun, but fanned al- 
ways by the northeast trade wind. Never have I 
seen water more deeply blue — not even in the 
Adriatic. By right, the Caribbean is a lumpy sea; 
but for the moment it was delightfully smooth. All 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 49 

the ship's officers were in white duck uniforms — 
and as for the passengers they lolled about the 
decks in the garb of midsummer. 

It was then that I fell in with him whom I shall 
call the Mogul. I had heard him chatting with the 
captain who received him reverentially. From his 
interest in the hieroglyphs of the Maya Indians I 
had set him down as an archaeologist. But by sub- 
sequent confession he turned out to be the editor 
of a journal famed in two worlds. 

On Monday noon we came in sight of the Isth- 
mus. Big blue mountains loomed ahead and a pall 
of smoke low on the starboard bow betokened the 
presence of Colon. Nearer approach revealed long 
breakwaters presaging sheltered anchorage. Then 
a broad harbor, the border of which teemed with 
buildings; and behind them lofty palms. A beauti- 
ful new concrete hotel stood invitingly on the point, 
fanned by a sea breeze in the noonday heat. Vast 
docks in being and others in construction marked the 
Atlantic terminus of the watery highway through 
the Isthmus — and just then came the zealous 
stewards with their inevitable call to face the 
doctor in the dining-saloon. 

However, he proved a friendly and inviting 
doctor — a smiling young chap in khaki who merely 
called your name and beamed a benediction when 



50 SAILING SOUTH 

you rose and acknowledged your miserable iden- 
tity. This ordeal over, we were free to go ashore — 
and we did so with all speed. 

I half intended, when I began, to write in lighter 
vein about the Panama Canal — but I have been 
forced to abandon the project. It is n't a thing to 
be treated lightly. It is too big and too noble. To 
see it, even briefly, gives one a new and a justifiable 
pride in one's country. If ever you feel moved to 
pick flaws in the United States and its people, get 
thee straightway to Panama and behold a gigantic 
miracle — wrought by America! As the Mogul re- 
marked that day, when we stood awed and dwarfed 
before the locks of Gatun, "There is nothing that 
this country cannot do — if it only will!" That is 
so. But I hasten to remind you that only by deny- 
ing itself some of the pet nonsense of our blessed 
unfettered democracy did it triumph at Panama. 
It was a one-man job, done by the one right man. 
He was — and his successor still is — supreme 
there. The usual nonsense about every man being 
equal in a democracy — with all the pitiful in- 
efliciency that goes with it — has had no place in 
the Zone. The result is the canal, built by the 
American people who, for once, had the wit to 
keep politics out and to put none but the super- 
latively competent on the job. Mr. Kipling some- 



> PANAMA AND THE CANAL 51 

where makes one of his characters say that the big 
things of history are always one-man jobs. I be- 
Heve it. The canal is an instance of it. 

I take it the tendency is to continue the con- 
dition yet a little while. There is still, at all events, 
an army governor in "the Zone" — ^ that strip of 
land reaching from ocean to ocean, say, six miles 
wide, through which runs the canal. This is a 
purely federal jurisdiction, and the governor is our 
duly accredited instrument there. It appears that 
he is supreme — practically speaking. Things do 
not go at sixes and sevens in the Zone; they are 
really " run" by the Government. Liquor is barred 
out. Undesirable characters are kept away. Dis- 
ease is practically banished, too. Take the average 
city's death-rate and compare it with that of the 
Zone, and then reflect honestly on the virtue of 
slipshod American city government when compared 
with the virtues of this well-managed autocracy, at 
which our democracy so wisely and providentially 
winks! Not that I would have you disbelieve in 
democracy; for we have to believe in that, or we 
are doomed. But rather that I can see in this one 
exceptional suspension of our usual instruments of 
government an unanswerable argument for our 
finding the right man and letting him alone, in- 
stead of running mad over "initiatives" and "refer- 



52 SAILING SOUTH 

endums" and contemptibly incapable administra- 
tors, whose one qualification is that of being able 
to bamboozle enough foolish voters to get them- 
selves elected. 

I came away from the Zone a better American. 
So will any one who goes thither. After all, it is a 
relief once in a while to see a place that is really 
governed ! 

In order clearly to understand the Panama Canal, 
one must first gain a clear conception of what the 
Isthmus itself is like. The fancy gayly paints a 
mere narrow neck of land between two great 
oceans; and as the neck of land is not more than 
fifty miles wide, it is easy to imagine a simple ditch 
dug across it, deep enough and wide enough for the 
passage of ships. But no such conception of the 
case is accurate. 

There is all the difference in the world between 
the Panama Canal and that at Suez. Suez pre- 
sented few difficulties by comparison. Count de 
Lesseps had small trouble in digging there a great 
sea-level channel through the sands, which, once 
dug, could be kept open. At Panama, after a con- 
siderable debate and prolonged investigation, it 
was decided to be better not to attempt a sea-level 
canal, but to build one with locks and dams. Now 
that it is completed, it seems odd that one should 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 53 

have thought of doing it in any other way. But one 
has to take a long and illuminating look at the 
Isthmus to see why this is so. 

The first discoverers of the Isthmus must have 
found it amazingly impenetrable, for not only is it 
highly mountainous on its western side, but also it 
is covered with a dense jungle growth, as different 
from the open barrenness of Suez as anything 
could be. No one can appreciate the jungle who 
has not seen it. An ordinary northern forest with 
dense underbrush is nothing to it. A jungle is al- 
most a solid mass of vegetation through which one 
must hack one's way, foot by foot, aided by a 
machete or knife as long as a saber. What is worse, 
the jungle will grow up behind you almost as fast 
as you can cut it down. The Spaniards who came 
first to Panama nevertheless succeeded in cutting a 
path across to the Pacific and even made a rude 
paved road, over which they later transported the 
magnificent loot which they took home from Peru 
and the Incas. Traces of that road are still visible, 
despite the jungle. 

Years after came Mr. Aspinwall, a New York 
merchant, with his plan for a railroad. It was built 
and was successfully operated, although the place 
was a perfect hotbed of disease. Many of the early 
settlers of California journeyed by this route. There 



54 SAILING SOUTH 

was at one time a project for a marine railroad to 
carry whole ships across, but it came to nothing. 
The natural project for a ship canal, while always 
being talked of, brought only futile struggles dur- 
ing something like four hundred years. The Isth- 
mus, while hardly two score miles in width, was 
terribly obdurate. It was fairly low and level to- 
ward the Atlantic shore, but as one went on toward 
the Pacific one encountered the great ridge which 
serves to connect the Rockies of the north with the 
Andes of the south. This must be cut through, of 
course, and to cut it deep enough to permit a sea- 
level canal would be a labor sufficient to make the 
combined tasks of Hercules seem but child's play. 
To make a cut deep enough for an elevated lock 
canal, high above the ocean levels, was not so ter- 
rible an undertaking — but it was terrible enough. 
De Lesseps, fresh from his triumphs at Suez, 
went down before the natural handicaps of Panama, 
coupled with a certain amount of grafting at home 
and abroad. His laborers died like flies in the pes- 
tilential air. Ultimately his cars and shovels were 
abandoned where they stood, and the jungle en- 
gulfed them in its sea of impenetrable verdure. 
Years later came the American engineers, backed 
by American doctors, and the gigantic task was 
assailed anew — this time with a success which, 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 



55 



without the doctors, would never have been won. 

The present Panama Canal amounts to this: it is 

a great artificial inland pond — or half pond and 

half river — flooding the whole interior basin of 




CANAL ZONE 



the Isthmus and reached from either ocean by 
climbing three titanic steps. The engineers simply 
took the greatest local river, the Chagres, and 
dammed it up, so that it formed a lake in the basin 
of the land. Then they dug a channel through the 



56 SAILING SOUTH 

western hills; built locks at either end to lift ships 
up or let them down; and dug short sea-level inlets 
from either ocean. For the water in the canal 
proper, the Chagres is relied upon. To go from 
Atlantic to Pacific, a ship must be lifted up until 
it attains the level of the main canal, and at the 
other end must be let down again. 

The result is that the canal doesn't look very 
much as you expect a canal to look. For the first 
five or six miles as you go in from the Atlantic it 
lives up to the usual reputation of such things, but 
at that point you come to the Gatun locks. These 
are three in number, arranged in " double- track " 
style, so that ships can be sent both ways without 
waiting for one another. If you can imagine a 
series of ordinary canal locks, but magnified several 
hundred fold and built of concrete so that they 
present the appearance of mammoth upward steps, 
you will get an idea of the sight. 

The ship glides into the first lock, which is at 
sea-level, and is shut in there. Then water is ad- 
mitted from the adjacent lock above and the ship 
begins imperceptibly to rise. When the basin is 
filled, the huge gates in front are opened and the 
vessel is towed into the second chamber. Safely 
penned in there, it is once again lifted by admitting 
still more water — ■ and eventually it is thus raised 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 57 

aloft to the level of the main canal. But no mere 
words can give you an idea of the stupendous size 
of such works as this, capable of accommodating 
the largest craft afloat and of handling it as if it 
were a child's toy. The great gates are like the 
sides of mammoth city blocks. Down inside the 
concrete walls are tunnels and complicated ma- 
chinery whereby the mammoth mechanism is oper- 
ated. Merely turning a switch does it all. A child 
could operate it — and yet it involves powers such 
as the ancients imagined to be wielded only by 
mighty Jove. 

Arriving as we did in early afternoon and being 
pressed for time, as cruising transients must usually 
be, we elected to motor out to Gatun. In that way 
you can see the great dam and the three locks of 
this eastern, or rather northern, end of the canal, 
and then take the evening train across to Panama 
at the Pacific end. Gatun is the big show, really. It 
was there that they built the prodigious dam that 
holds back the Chagres and thus makes the whole 
canal. At this end the three locks are grouped — 
whereas at the other end they are distributed be- 
tween "Peter McGill" (Pedro Miguel) and Mira- 
flores. 

It is a pleasant motor ride out from Colon over 
a good road besprent with oil. You see nothing 



58 SAILING SOUTH 

whatever of the canal until you get to Gatun it- 
self. You are delighted, however, with the tropical 
vegetation that lines the highway, and you are 
impressed with the neatness and trimness of the 
habitations that go to form the villages of the 
Zone. Colon, indeed, is a rather flat, stale, and un- 
profitable town. It is too new. The houses are all 
much alike, all painted a monotonous slate-gray 
that is said to stand the climate better than any- 
thing else, and all screened from top to bottom 
against the baneful mosquitoes that of old made 
the Isthmus a plague-spot. The conquering of the 
mosquito was the first step — but he is conquered. 
To-day there is n't a more healthful spot on earth 
than the Zone. You leave the town and circle away 
into the country, and for half an hour you exclaim 
over the palms and the flowers. Imagine, if you 
please, wonderful orchids that you would pay un- 
told sums for in the United States, all growing wild 
as parasites on the wayside trees! 

Then comes another village, set on a hill, and 
beyond it, shining whitely in the tropic sun, the 
vast concrete stretches of the Gatun locks. This, 
then, is the canal! You can see it now, stretching 
away to meet the Atlantic, in a silver ribbon. It 
looks absurdly narrow, yet two great liners could 
pass in it, easily. As for the locks, they are chastely 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 59 

beautiful. If one thing surprised me more than an- 
other about this stupendous work it was, as Ka- 
trina puts it, that it was "so good-looking." The 
gashes and scars of constructive work are healed. 
The design of the works is simple, but dignified and 
handsome. It is sublimely ship-shape. Nothing is 
out of place. Nothing is overdone. The railroad 
station, hard by, is like a villa. So are the official 
buildings — all of white concrete with red tiled 
roofs. Art and utility have gone hand in hand. 

You alight and wander down over the locks. You 
cross them on the top of a gigantic gate. How 
enormous it is you can never guess, because the 
lock is full of water and you cannot see into the 
depths. To one side lies the huge inland lake 
formed by the dam. To the other, the descending 
line of the dual locks, and beyond them the low- 
lying channel that dwindles away until it meets 
the sea. 

You are free to walk about and to make pictures. 
Zone police, who look like soldiers, are everywhere 
and are very glad to have you talk with them. 
They find life very dull, indeed, especially in days 
of suspended traffic, which were very frequent 
when the slides of earth were forever blocking the 
canal. It is small fun to sit for hours watching a 
huge concrete lock basking in a midsummer sun; 



6o SAILING SOUTH 

yet it must be done, else some designing lunatic 
might slip a stick of dynamite into the lock and 
ruin the work of years. The Great War intensified 
that fear. 

On each side of the waterway you will see narrow 
tracks, and on them some squat, beetle-like electric 
tractors of unguessable potency. These are used 
like oxen to tow the vessels from one lock to the 
next — attached to each side. Only in the canal 
proper does the passing ship use its own power. In 
the lock it is moved cautiously by these great but 
slow-moving engines. You will likewise observe 
some enormous chains of iron stretched across the 
entrance to guard against accident if a ship ever 
should break away from its other apron-strings and 
run wild. And up at the lake end — the one blemish 
on all the chaste beauty of the concrete — are some 
vast steel frameworks containing the emergency 
gates. On extreme occasions, all else failing, a turn of 
the wrist would swing those gigantic structures across 
the canal and drop gates into the aperture below. 
This has been done only for drill purposes — and of 
course for the movies. The chance of needing the 
emergency gate is remote — but the Government 
takes no chances. So far as one can see, every con- 
tingency is provided for, except "acts of God." 

You are hardly conscious of the dam at all, but 



PANAMA AND THE CANAL 6i 

you may walk out across its gigantic top and see the 
spillway provided to let the Chagres run free when- 
ever the lake is full. I should have liked to see it 
in the rainy season, when it is pouring out in full 
cataract — but on our visit it was almost dry. Our 
captain says that the seasons in Panama are "nine 
months rainy and three months wet" — but for 
the moment the showers forbore and the level of the 
lake was not quite up to the point where the river 
must pour out its bounteous surplus. Meanwhile a 
cooling breath of air streamed in from the sea and 
made it a perfect June afternoon. 

About five o'clock the train comes along and you 
can go over to Panama by rail in the fading light. 
It is a fine American railroad, much broader than 
our roads at home and served by oil-burning engines 
that allow you open windows and freedom from 
dirt. It is a wonderful ride, with the great wall of 
the solid jungle coming closely down to the right- 
of-way — a jungle of queer trees, queer birds, and 
abundant flowers. Now and again you pass a tiny 
hamlet, composed of old, discarded freight cars, 
all mounted on stilts and sheltering agglomerations 
of negroes. Poor and squalid as these habitations 
are, you will see pots of tropical flowers growing by 
the door — flowers that at home would cost you a 
dollar a blossom at the lowest! 



62 SAILING SOUTH 

For a time you skirt the edges of the artificial lake 
— a lake as big as a county. Out of its waters tower 
the dying limbs of forests of trees. The water has 
invaded what was once the jungle and has killed it. 
In time these bare branches will all be gone; but 
for the present they are pathetic in their abject and 
miserable nakedness, for miles and miles. Of the 
actual steamer channel through the lake you can see 
nothing, for the road winds far away from it. But as 
you near the western hills, where the great lake ends 
and only a narrow channel serves to give passage to 
ships through the bulk of the mountain ridge, you 
come upon it again. It is here that one finds all the 
trouble — the slides due to the hills of Culebra. 
A hint of the mischief is seen in the passing of 
dredging scows, with now and then the towering 
bulk of a dredge itself — the greatest in the world. 
But of the Culebra Cut — now renamed for En- 
gineer Gaillard — you see nothing. It is hidden by 
the hills, and its inspection must await another day. 



CHAPTER V 
THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 

THAT glorious condition in which you cannot 
tell where one thing leaves off and another 
begins is well typified in the situation at the Isthmus 
where, with a harmony that is subject to change 
and correction without notice, the United States 
maintains a strip subject to its federal jurisdiction 
straight through the midst of the new-hatched and 
as yet hardly fledged Republic of Panama. 

The republic was born somewhat prematurely, if 
memory serves, but not altogether unexpectedly to 
Mr. Roosevelt's watchful and determined adminis- 
tration. There was n't much trouble. And possibly 
in consideration of the watchfulness which per- 
mitted this painless separation of the new republic 
from the older entity of Colombia, the United States 
acquired right, title, and interest to a six-mile belt 
from sea to sea — six miles wide and perhaps fifty 
miles long — in the center of which it might dig its 
mammoth ship canal to unite the Atlantic and 
Pacific Oceans. 

It was not our fortune to see very much of the 
Atlantic end of the Zone, or to pass any time at the 



64 SAILING SOUTH 

Washington Hotel which the Federal Government 
maintains on the Atlantic side in a location which 
ought to insure a most delicious ocean breeze. Chris- 
topher Columbus lives anew in the dual names of 
the terminal town — Cristobal, where our Govern- 
ment holds sway, and Colon, where the sovereignty- 
vests in Panama. Cruisers like ourselves are slaves 
of the ship. We may see what time permits and no 
more. And as the Pacific side is infinitely the finer of 
the two for those whose stay must be brief, thither 
we betook ourselves, as has been said, by the wings 
of the five-o'clock train, reaching the governmental 
hotel, the Tivoli, in season for a belated dinner. 

I first " stared at the Pacific " by night over a sea- 
wall. In the gloom it looked very much as the At- 
lantic had done on the other side of the Isthmus. 
However, like Byron, I felt — or thought I felt — 
no common glow. The waters might make much the 
same swish as they do in all other ports; the salty 
smell might be the same ; but after all this was the 
Pacific, a vast ocean which I had never before be- 
held — the selfsame ocean that so abashed stout 
Cortez by revealing that he had n't reached China 
after all. 

We had driven down from the hotel through the 
dusk to see the searchlight drill at the forts — for 
when they are playing you can see the various islands 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 65 

in the Bay of Panama picked out with shafts of 
burning light, and the spectacle is said to be very 
fine. As it fell out we were much too late for the show. 
The Pacific, indeed, lay before us in all its mystery, 
murmuring gently as it washed against the break- 
water. Far out on its obscure bosom were the lights 
of an anchored ship; but of the islands and the sea 
nothing was seen. Overhead the stars burned bril- 
liantly in a cloudless tropic sky. A constellation 
fondly believed by us to be the Southern Cross, but 
later proved to be a fraudulent substitute, dignified 
the remote horizon. 

The night was cool. Officers who have spent years 
in Panama inform me that they do not recall a night 
in all their residence when it was not cool enough to 
make a blanket welcome. Hot it may be — and is — 
by day; yet even so it is never so intolerably hot as it 
often is in the worst part of a northern summer. At 
night you may be sure that it will be cool enough 
for entire comfort. I forget the daily average tem- 
perature, but it is something between 80° and 90°. 
This, I am told, is true alike in midwinter and mid- 
summer. So far as the thermometer goes all seasons 
are alike at the Isthmus. You might go down there 
in July and be no hotter than you would be if you 
went in January. The difference is only one of 
moisture. The greater part of the year — spring. 



66 SAILING SOUTH 

summer, and fall, let us say — is distinctly rainy. 
The winter — at least three months of it — is dig- 
nified by the term "dry season" because it rains 
only now and then instead of bringing assurance of a 
daily downpour in the afternoon. 

The real wear and tear of life on the Isthmus is not 
due to terrific extremes of heat, then, but to per- 
sistent heat of a very endurable degree. It is sum- 
mer all the time — a good, hot, reasonable sort of 
midsummer, but without any welcome let-up save 
for the coolness of the night and the persistence of 
the breeze, on which latter you may depend for most 
of the year and throughout nearly every day. In 
the early afternoon it drops away, and for a space 
the world remains quietly in the shade ; but at four 
o'clock it springs up anew and life again begins to 
stir. 

I have a confused recollection of the goodly city 
of Panama, which is the chief town of the new 
Republic of Panama, and the guardian of the Pacific 
side of the narrow Isthmus. It is entirely to the 
east of the canal entrance and from the water- 
front of the city you cannot see the canal mouth at 
all. Which reminds me of the fact that the Canal 
and Isthmus together have the disconcerting habit 
of not running in the direction you naturally expect. 
If you are like me, you think of the Isthmus as 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 67 

running north and south, while the Canal runs east 
and west. Instead, it is the other way about, roughly 
speaking. East of the city of Panama is a sizable 
gulf, and the sun rises out of it — which is thor- 
oughly subversive of all your ideas. It is actually 
possible at the proper season to behold the sun 
rising out of the Pacific and setting in the Atlantic. 
A most remarkable place, that Isthmus! You will 
have little help from the ordinary maps of the canal 
because they usually ignore the common custom of 
making the north come at the top of the page. But 
you must lay aside your doubts and accept what I 
tell you. The sun does n't really rise in the south; 
it only seems to. 

It is hard, when you are in the Canal Zone, to tell 
where the Zone leaves off and the Republic of Pan- 
ama begins. The difference is a good deal like that 
between Boston and Roxbury. Nevertheless, there 
is an appreciable distinction. The one is United 
States jurisdiction and the other is Panamanian — 
or, as Professor Hart would put it, "Panamese." 
The line between is imaginary but important. You 
understand that the United States has jurisdiction 
over a strip of country about six miles broad from 
ocean to ocean, through the middle of which runs the 
canal. This affects you, as a tourist, only when you 
are in the terminal cities of Colon and Panama. 



68 SAILING SOUTH 

The United States part of Colon is called Cristobal ; 
and the federal share of Panama is called Ancon. 
The only visible difference on crossing the imaginary 
line is that the policemen are of a different aspect 
and uniform — and that there is an absence in the 
Zone of signs announcing the sale of licores. In 
short, the Zone is as "dry" as a covered bridge, 
while Panama proper is not. Steamers tying up in 
Colon are subjected to a penalty of one thousand 
dollars if they open their bars and sell a drop of 
liquor while there. Prohibition prohibits in the Zone. 
Laws are enforced. Nobody is at all concerned for 
fear of alienating any votes. If you go to Panama 
you'll heed the rules and regulations. It is a place 
where an efficiency of Teutonic proportions obtains 
all the time — and I like it. 

Out of my confused remembrances of the city of 
Panama stands out a noise of bells. The carriages all 
carry bells which have a pleasant two- toned peal. 
As you roll along the driver is perpetually sounding 
a warning note — a melodious ding-dong, not too 
loud nor yet too soft, but at once restful and ad- 
monitory. The motors have horns and other devices 
as here, but I suspect the drivers learned to use them 
with one eye on the nerves of " the Colonel," as they 
used to call Governor Goethals. It is n't likely he 
would stand for any needlessly nerve-racking nui- 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 69 

sances. The carnages are content, at all events, 
with the bells. Also the carriages are reasonably 
cheap. The cab-tariff used to be ten cents a person ; 
"ten cents gold" as they say, meaning ten cents in 
real money. Panamanian money is only half real. 
A quarter is as big as our fifty-cent piece. 

There are no very conspicuous "lions" to be seen 
in Panama. You find it a good deal larger town than 
you expected, and reasonably old, too, wherein it 
differs from Colon at the other end of the canal. 
Colon is brand-new and garish. Panama is ancient 
and well established. The only change from the 
older days is that now the town Is kept scrupulously 
clean. Among the sights one sees the remnant of 
an ancient church, which is ruined save for the per- 
sistence of a tremendously long and astonishingly 
flat brick arch. That arch, plus a Nicaraguan post- 
age stamp, decided the location of the canal. For one 
thing it was evident that the survival of the arch 
betokened a reasonable gentleness In the Panama 
brand of earthquake, else it would have been de- 
stroyed ages ago. As for the postage stamp, it was 
of a Nicaraguan issue, and It bore the vignette of 
an active volcano. At the moment Nicaragua was 
boasting of her entire freedom from all volcanic dis- 
turbance and arguing that she ought to get the 
canal — when along came a senator with this self- 



70 SAILING SOUTH 

damnatory stamp! It proved that there really was 
a volcano in Nicaragua, and within a year of the 
exposure of the fact that volcano erupted and de- 
stroyed a neighboring wharf which was also shown in 
the picture on the stamp. Little things are always 
altering the big things in the course of history. 

Panama is a pleasantly foreign sort of town. It 
is n't quite so foreign-looking as Havana, but it has 
a mellowness and a Spanishness that will serve. 
For contrasts you need only hire a cab and be driven 
up into the purlieus of Ancon and Balboa Heights — 
the residence district of the Powers-That-Be in the 
Zone. There you will find first a mammoth park 
laid out in ascending terraces for the uses of the 
United States Hospital. It is a hospital in a para- 
dise — and to be fully American I ought to add that 
it cost five million. Your negro driver is voluble as 
you jog through the well-kept roads that serve it. 
His chief awe is for the new and handsome crem- 
atorium — "whah dey buhns de daid folks, sah, 
after theym daid. Usted to bury dem in de cemetery, 
but now dey buhns dem. Yessah, jest nachelly 
buhns dem up, like dey was wood. Lan' too valu'ble 
fo' no mo' buryin*. Dey buhns dem, an' den dey 
has n't only a little bit o' ashes." He is impressed, 
and recurs often to the subject. It seems that there 's 
a new cemetery "out on Corozal road" to which the 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 71 

bodies of the martyred saints of other days, who 
had been interred whole but in the path of the 
canal, were removed when the dirt began to fly; but 
efficiency decrees the incineration of those who shall 
die hereafter. 

Meanwhile, enlivened by the mortuary reflec- 
tions of the driver, you amble gently up the winding 
road through the shade of sheltering palms, past 
trim hospital buildings nestling amid a lush greenery, 
and you eventually emerge on the heights of Balboa, 
where the governor lives, and the assistant governor, 
and any quantity of subalterns connected officially 
with the Zone. It is new yet, but beautiful. There 
are tennis courts baking in the sun, and gardens ad- 
joining trim houses. You look down also upon the 
busy life of the canal itself — a ribbon stretching to 
the sea from a great fissure in the inland hills. Time 
will gradually heal the scars that the digging has 
made in that cavernous vale below — indeed, it has 
begun to do so. For the moment, however, there is 
rather more evidence of the work of man lying at 
your feet than there is elsewhere eastward along the 
canal. The railroad is in evidence below, and great 
docks. But from up here in the heights they look 
like toys, and all about you is a beautiful residential 
neighborhood where it must be pleasant to live. In 
the midst is a simple but dignified administration 



72 SAILING SOUTH 

building, and a huge motor 'bus is forever plying up 
and down between it and the Government's great 
and admirable hotel, the Tivoli, in town. 

If the present city of Panama seems old, it is not 
nearly so old as the original Panama, to which you 
may motor over a road that leaves something still to 
be desired. This bit of ancient history lies eight 
miles to the southeastward and there is little left of 
it save a massive cathedral tower and a graceful 
bridge half hidden in the jungle. Sir Henry Morgan 
the buccaneer destroyed this former city in 1671. 
He did a thorough job, leaving hardly one stone on 
another. The jungle did the rest. Yet even the 
jungle did not, in all those intervening years, ob- 
literate entirely the ancient Spanish road over which 
the treasures of Peruvians and others were trans- 
ported to the waiting galleons of the Philips. For 
the bridge is a part of that old original thorough- 
fare across the Isthmus. The only present inhabit- 
ant of Old Panama is a saloon — an admirable ad- 
junct to picnic parties from the city. Palms wave in 
the wind, and the Pacific dimples at your feet as 
tranquilly as it did when stout Cortez first descried 
it from his distant peak in Darien. 

For the moment the world's interest in the Panama 
Canal centers in the Culebra Cut — the place where 
the great ditch cuts through the continental back- 




THE RUINS, OLD PANAMA 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 73 

bone of hill and mountain. It is here that the gigan- 
tic slides of earth have occurred, resulting in the 
temporary suspension of transit by water through 
the canal. As you ride along in the train — which 
does not pass very near Culebra — • you can see one of 
the hills that has been causing trouble. It looks pre- 
cisely like a great mound of ice-cream, into which 
one has thrust a huge knife slicing off one side. 
That side of the hill has slumped down a bit — 
and then stopped. It has left a yellow space be- 
tween its top and the original top of the hill. Pre- 
sumably it will eventually drop still farther. In the 
process it has either slid itself into the channel of 
the canal that passes below, or has forced the earth 
in the bed of the canal upward. There have been 
several such alterations in the surface at various 
other points in the vicinity. It is likely that there 
will be repeated instances of it — until the condition 
of the terrain is such that the land can remain 
permanently at rest. How long that will be no one 
dares to predict. 

The hope of the engineers is that the conditions 
favorable to equilibrium may be reached before very 
long. There is presumably a natural slope which, 
when finally established, will suffice to prevent fur- 
ther slipping of material. One is familiar with the 
situation presented by a heap of sand. If you bring 



74 SAILING SOUTH 

up a fresh barrow of sand and dump it on the pile, 
it will run down the side until it has established its 
appropriate slope. Then it will stop. Somewhat the 
same thing may be seen when you remove a shovel- 
ful of coal from the heap remaining in your bin, in the 
process of replenishing the furnace. Eventually you 
will start a very noisy sort of slide, comparable in its 
small way to those the diggers have produced in the 
Culebra Cut. 

In the case of the cut the process is complicated by 
the fact that the substrata of earth and rock are in 
places soft and almost liquidly unstable. It is said 
that in one place the substratum is virtually a bed of 
volcanic mud which has never solidified. As the 
digging progressed, the downward pressure of the 
surrounding hills became too great and the crust gave 
way beneath them, forcing the mud upward into 
the bed of the canal. Hopefully in the process of 
digging, this inequality of competing pressures will 
be removed and the sliding stopped. 

At all events, the engineers propose to keep right 
on dredging until the requisite equilibrium is at- 
tained. I talked with one young man who operated 
a dredge in this vicinity. He said that they would 
often dredge along their section leaving behind them 
a channel forty-five feet deep — and then would re- 
turn only to find it filled in again from below to the 



THE ZONE AND THE REPUBLIC 75 

depth of only a dozen feet. But they keep pegging 
away at it. They must. Having dug away so much 
already, they can always dig more. They can dig 
it all away if they have to, but their aim is simply to 
bring about a readjustment in the geological condi- 
tions such as will satisfy Dame Nature. Until that 
is done, the abrupt sides of the adjacent mountains 
pierced by the canal will frequently shift without 
even the intervention of any earthquake or convul- 
sion of Nature. 

But what a glorious thing it will be when it is 
completely done! And what an obligation upon us 
to defend it and keep it forever open as a peaceful 
servant of God's world ! It has been a gigantic task, 
the obstacles in the path of which are by no means all 
removed. One recalls the ancient story of the attempt 
to cut a canal at Cnidus, where the particles of rock 
from the chisels blinded the workmen's eyes and led 
to a consultation of the oracle. They got this answer; 

"Seek not to make a channel, nor dig the isthmus through; 
Zeus would have made your land an island, had it pleased him 
so to do." 

Suppose some worthy but old-fashioned person 
like Mr. Bryan had sent to some modern Delphi 
on learning of the slides at Panama, and been told 
that "God would have made the United States an 
island if he had wanted it done " ! Do you suppose he 
would have been so impious as to pursue the work? 



CHAPTER VI 

A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 

FROM Cristobal the cruising steamers take 
either one of two routes. Part of them turn east- 
ward and seek the northern ports of South America. 
The rest turn westward along the shore of Panama 
and ultimately arrive at Port Limon, the principal 
port of Costa Rica, with possibly a call at the way- 
stations of Bocas del Toro and Almirante. It de- 
veloped that the latter was to be our portion — 
for which I was not sorry, as it gave us the only 
possible view of the Republic of Panama, aside from 
what one may see in the immediate vicinity of the 
Zone. For travel in Panama is by no means easy. 
None of these tropical republics can claim to be 
provided with highways. Trails through the wooded 
hills, navigable only on muleback, or chance rivers 
where one may use a small power boat, appear to 
afford the only means of locomotion when the 
presidente makes an official progress through his 
domains. 

Nevertheless this republic is no inconsiderable 
country. It is something like four hundred miles 
long, and at its very widest it is n't more than one 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 77 

hundred miles wide. Its total area is around thirty- 
two thousand square miles. As an independent 
political unit Panama dates officially from 1904, 
following the abrupt revolution which Colombia 
always insisted the Roosevelt Administration had 
covertly engineered. As a known part of the earth, 
however, Panama surpasses most of us. Columbus 
landed there in 1502; and of course the curious 
geographical situation at the narrowest part of the 
neck joining the two continents made the region of 
"Darien" a natural center for the traffic which 
Spain entered upon in her quest for precious min- 
erals in the New World. Despite various abortive 
efforts at setting up an independent Isthmian re- 
public, Panama continued for the most part an 
isolated appendage of Colombia down to the time 
when the Americans seriously undertook the project 
of digging the canal. 

At that juncture, possibly because the people of 
Panama felt that the Colombian authorities were in 
danger of throwing away their chances by undue 
haggling over canal terms, revolution broke out 
and an independent government was hastily pro- 
claimed. This was on the 3d of November, 1903. 
With a haste which Colombia has always argued 
was unseemly and indicative of a potential col- 
lusion, the United States recognized this new 



78 SAILING SOUTH 

government November 6. In fact derisive critics 
have intimated that this recognition came very 
near to antedating the actual revolution! At all 
events, the Republic of Panama was abruptly born 
and was abruptly organized — and even France 
accorded it an official recognition within four days 
after independence had been formally recognized in 
Washington. Nor was this speed without precedent. 
Brazil's independent government was recognized 
within two days after its declaration. One is prone 
to conclude that while the upheaval in Panama 
was not unexpected by Washington, it was perfectly 
genuine and was by no means the first movement 
of its kind. In one argument it has also been de- 
fended as a mere "resumption of independence" 
from one of the former efforts in the same direction. 
Provocation for the step was abundant. Colom- 
bia had been negotiating for the building of a 
canal by the United States and an arrangement, 
supposed to be mutually satisfactory, had been 
made. In the meantime a determined effort of a 
rival nature was being made to locate the prospec- 
tive canal in Nicaragua. The Colombian Govern- 
ment, possibly believing that the bid for the con- 
cession would be raised, suddenly turned about, 
refused to ratify the treaty already negotiated, and 
adjourned. It was this which precipitated the re- 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 79 

volt in Panama, which province had never greatly 
loved Colombia at best and which now saw a 
chance that the canal would go to Nicaragua after 
it was almost in her grasp. It happened that an 
energetic American was at that time President of 
the United States, to whom the necessity of assail- 
ing the isthmian problem was apparent. It was 
done — and on the whole it is hard to regret it, 
although Colombia's plea for recompense has com- 
manded sympathy. 

At present, then, the Republic of Panama is a 
perfectly recognized member of the family of na- 
tions — cut in twain at the waist by the Canal 
Zone. The government vests in a president, chosen 
by direct popular vote for a term of four years, 
and assisted by a cabinet of five. There is a legis- 
lature composed of a single house which meets 
regularly on a biennial basis. Eight provinces are 
comprised in the republic, each province having its 
governor. Industrially speaking, the chief products 
are bananas, cocoanuts, sugar cane, and various 
other tropical woods and fruits. Curiously enough, 
the so-called "Panama" hat seems to be made in 
its best estate in other, but adjacent, countries. 

So much of didacticism I trust I may be pardoned 
before taking up the tale of further venturings in 
the outskirts of this ancient but still juvenile 



80 SAILING SOUTH 

country. A little of it we had seen in the brief drive 
out toward the ruins of Old Panama. It remained 
to take the railroad once more back to the Atlantic 
side where the ship was announced as ready to 
sail. 

With the arrival of the evening train from Pan- 
ama, the steamer prepared to go. There was some 
delay because Mrs. X., who was gayly turned out 
with her twenty-fifth new gown and fifth new hat, 
could n't be located at all among the passengers. 
It was discovered by telephone that she was at 
the Hotel Washington and had just ordered some 
potage supreme d, la Miraflores with the idea of din- 
ing in great content ashore. Frenzied emissaries 
from the ship tore her away from the table, and 
the gangplank rose behind her heels. We were off. 

However, we did n't go far. Late in the warm 
evening, as we all lounged on deck sipping lemon- 
ade and smoking the spoils of Havana, some one 
remarked that we seemed to be going very slowly, 
and some one else who looked over the side an- 
nounced that we were not going at all. The chief 
engineer showed a head over the stairway; and the 
captain, who had just been giving us some super- 
heated views of the Great War, promptly dived 
down the companionway after him. The rest of 
us " looked at each other with a wild surmise." It 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 8i 

was evident that something had gone wrong below. 
The captain on his return merely remarked that, 
at all events, it was n't a submarine and disap- 
peared once more with a reassuring grin. The 
while there arose from the depths of the ship the 
sound of hammers, and occasionally a voice raised 
in supplication for the immediate condemnation 
from on high of something that apparently was n't 
working right in the engine-room. Possibly they 
were shipping a new tire. It sounded that way. 
One by one the feminine passengers faded away 
with affected nonchalance to their cabins, while the 
men gathered in quiet little knots, with equally 
affected nonchalance, secretly wondering whether, 
if we had to take to the boats, they would be seen to 
be brave. Fortunately the sea was like glass, and 
we were n't more than thirty miles off Cristobal, 
anyhow. At this point the tinkle of the engine- 
telegraph was heard and shortly the reassuring 
thud of the propellers. Gayety returned, more 
lemonade was ordered, more cigars. What more 
delicious on the last night of February than to be 
sitting in spotless pongee clothing, on a spotless 
deck, surrounded by creature comforts, fair women 
and brave men, with stars of unwonted brilliancy 
beaming overhead? 

Eight bells the next morning — one of the times 



82 SAILING SOUTH 

when the ship's bells consent to toll an hour that 
is easily understood by landsmen — ■ found us ap- 
proaching the shore again at the extreme north- 
western end of the Republic of Panama — a won- 
derful shore that looked as if it had stepped out 
of a story-book. The misty mountains far inland 
looked just like any mountains elsewhere; but the 
immediate foreground, with its strip of yellow sand 
followed immediately by the dense growth of the 
tropic jungle, satisfied every requirement of the 
fancy as the setting for O. Henry's "Cabbages and 
Kings," or "Treasure Island," or any of those 
delightful whimsies. 

One or two rocks, fantastically carved by cen- 
turies of wind and wave, stood up out of the water 
off the point. A palm-clad island lay just before. 
Between it and a jutting lowland appeared an inlet 
which, on nearer view, was seen to broaden to a 
vast enclosed lagoon. This was Bocas del Toro. I 
speak subject to correction, but I think that means 
"Mouth of the Bull." My Spanish, never very 
fluent, is terribly rusty in these days of prolonged 
disuse. I tried it on various persons in Panama, 
but they were unmoved. I oiled it up again later 
and used it a bit in San Jos6, but with only a quali- 
fied success. There seems to be something wrong 
with my pronunciation. Perhaps it is too truly 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 83 

Castillan for the degenerate dialects of the Central 
Americas ! 

As the lagoon opened out, it revealed new beau- 
ties, the chief of which lay in the wondrous extent 
of this sheltered bay with its numerous islands — 
all story-book islands — ■ and its immediately sur- 
rounding hills covered with dense jungle. Here we 
dropped anchor, with the background of tropical 
verdure all about. The island that served nearly to 
fill the entrance from the sea was, I later learned, 
the very one upon which Columbus, after one of his 
voyages, careened his ships in order to scrape their 
barnacled bottoms; wherefore to this day it bears 
the name of Careening Key. 

A few hundred yards away lay the hamlet of 
Bocas del Toro, attractive enough when seen from 
the distance, but rather obviously composed of 
houses of corrugated iron. Corrugated iron is the 
favorite building material in these parts. They 
seldom bother to paint it. It has the merit of being 
durable and waterproof, and above all of not 
splintering to bits in the average earthquake — 
which is highly important in a land where the earth 
is trembling a large part of the time. The captain 
said there would be a launch along by-and-by to 
take those ashore who wished a nearer view; but 
by this time I was in confidential relations with 



84 SAILING SOUTH 

him and he gave me a private and personal hint 
that I 'd much better remain aboard ship where it 
was cool, and incidentally save a half-dollar. His 
opinion was that "all these towns looked their 
level best over the stern of the steamer as you were 
going away." 

Meanwhile we became aware of a piratical-look- 
ing sloop bearing down upon us, all loaded down 
with gypsy men. I never saw more human beings 
crowded on a smaller craft. They were all standing, 
because there was no room to do anything else. 
Elevated above them was a single figure ■ — a man, 
who was apparently making an impassioned speech. 
He waved his arms and gesticulated madly. All 
Spanish peoples are born with the oratorical gift, 
and this representative of the race had it abun- 
dantly. At regular intervals his harangue was in- 
terrupted by his auditors with a staccato cheer. 
The effect was like this : 

"Gabble, gabble, gabble, gabble — " 

"Viva!" 

"Gabble, gabble, gabble, gabble — ■ " 

"Viva!" 

It appeared that it was a political meeting. There 
was pending what passes in Panama for a presi- 
dential election, and there was in town a delegate 
representing the aspirations of one of the national 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 85 

candidates. His devoted adherents were seeing 
him off and were punctuating his remarks with 
whole-hearted "Vivas" that presaged victory and a 
triumph for the right. This craft, with Its motley 
but vocal company, circled round and round the 
steamer. Meantime the speech never faltered. The 
"Vivas'* came with faithful regularity. And when 
speaking's best was done, to the band they left the 
rest — a wonderful band of three pieces. 

Its music left much to be desired — but after all 
it was better than "the professor's." The pro- 
fessor — ■ so dubbed by the Mogul — came aboard 
our craft the night before, at Cristobal. He was a 
flamboyant darkey, dressed in those indescribable 
blue clothes that his race delights In, and possessed 
of an insatiable desire to manipulate the keys of 
the ship's hard-worn piano. I suppose he slept a 
few hours at some time during the night; but all 
the rest of the time he was seated in what the ship's 
plan persisted in calling the "Music-Room," ham- 
mering a long-suffering upright that had weathered 
many a gale and evidently felt it. With unabated 
zeal he tore from the depths of the unresisting in- 
strument that curious brand of melody that seems 
to be sacred to the uses of the moving-picture 
shows. In self-defense the passengers had taken the 
wings of the morning and dwelt In the uttermost 



86 SAILING SOUTH 

parts of the ship — only to be assailed anew with 
the strains of a tuba, a snare drum, and a flageolet, 
playing what may well have been the Panamanian 
national hymn, although it may be that in this 
latter assumption I am doing a serious injustice to 
a great and friendly people. 

Those who were going ashore doubtless had to 
see some sort of a doctor, and I trembled lest the 
medical authority overhear the "professor" at his 
devastating worst and deny him his exequatur^ — 
or imprimatur, or exeat, or whatever it is they re- 
quire as a credential — on the score of his incurable 
appetite for ragtime. But he appeared at last, re- 
splendent in all his finery, and got into the shore 
launch unrestrained. We were safe — except that 
the pessimistic Mogul apprehended he was "only 
getting off there for the day" and would rejoin us 
when we came back again from the other end of the 
lagoon at night. Some one is always taking the joy 
out of life ! 

* Those who took the trip to the shore and return 
came back very hot and by no means impressed by 
Bocas as a City Beautiful. They did not even at- 
tempt to crow over those of us who had stayed 
aboard and kept fairly cool. Instead they sank into 
chairs and ordered things from the smoke-room 
bar — for Bocas had no silly rule imposing a fine 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 87 

of one thousand dollars on ships that pass if they 
happen to open the ice-chest to the seeker after 
humectants. 

Innumerable bags of cocoa were being tucked 
away in the hold while we lay basking under the 
tropic sun. They were loaded by hand, by Carib 
negroes. Candor compels me to confess that the 
Carib negro is not a dynamo of energy. Three 
heavy bags and then a whole rest seems to be the 
way his symphony is scored. However, we should 
not blame him. If we lived in a town where it 
never gets lower than 85° and frequently more 
than 92° in the shade, summer or winter, we should 
probably be somewhat less industrious than we 
are. 

Eventually the last sack was put in, the anchor 
camemuddily up, the propellers turned again^ — and 
we steamed off up the ever-narrowing bay a dozen 
miles more to the banana settlement of Almirante. 
Once again subject to correction, I affirm that this 
means "Admiral." I suspect that it belongs, body, 
soul, and spirit, to the United Fruit Company. It 
has too trim and prosperous a look to belong to 
anybody else, and there was an array of nice-look- 
ing college boys on the dock, who had all the ear- 
marks of being employed by the fruit corporation. 
The sight of these clean and alert young fellows 



88 SAILING SOUTH 

in shirt-sleeves gladdened me. They appeared to 
advantage against the general shiftlessness of the 
native-born. 

Almirante itself is n't much to see. There is no 
visible town. To be sure, there is a toy railroad 
which penetrates the wilderness and collects ba- 
nanas for a living; but at the moment it wasn't 
working. Our ship's mission there was not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister. In other words, 
we had brought a deckload of steel rods and bars 
to be delivered at this port, as well as innumerable 
boxes of tomato catsup, barrels which from their 
labels I suspect contained bottled beer, and other 
provender essential to the upkeep of a hard-working 
force of healthy young men in a tropic clime. The 
steel rods took the longest. I timed the Carib boys 
who handled them, and discovered that from the 
time a steel rod was first lifted to the moment of its 
ultimate deposit on the near-by handcar there regu- 
larly elapsed one minute, twelve and two-fifths 
seconds. There were perhaps six hundred rods. 
Now, Johnnie, at what hour did the steamer leave 
Almirante? Take your time! 

Oh, no! of course! How stupid of me! I could n't 
expect you to answer that correctly because I for- 
got to tell you what time the unloading started. 
Well, never mind! We didn't in fact leave until 



A PANAMANIAN INTERLUDE 89 

nearly eight, when it was as dark in the lagoon as 
the inside of an infidel. The jungle hills of the sur- 
rounding land faded out until they looked just like 
any other hills. At last even the hills sank back 
into the dark. But the boat managed to find her 
way out into the bay again, and in the course of an 
hour we had picked up once more the garish lights 
of Bocas del Toro — quite a town, if you see it in 
the evening. The beauty and chivalry of the place 
came out in boats to see us and enliven an other- 
wise uneventful day. A lighter also drew alongside 
and bestowed upon us a few more sacks of cocoa 
to take home. 

All the while the Mogul hung expectantly over 
the gangway scrutinizing every person who came 
aboard with the avowed expectation of seeing the 
musical "professor" return. The suspense was 
awful. However, at the end the whistle blew, the 
visitors were ordered ashore, the launches departed, 
the gangplank was drawn up — and we began once 
again to move. The "professor" had not come 
back. 

"Thank God," said the Mogul. 



CHAPTER VII 
IN COSTA RICA 

AT dawn we were abreast of Port Limon, and 
by breakfast-time were made fast to a pre- 
carious-looking pier which thrust its way out to 
sea. The incoming breakers spent themselves be- 
yond, but the pulsations of the ocean made the 
vessel rise and fall spasmodically at her dock, chaf- 
ing the fenders and causing some speculation as to 
whether the numerous ropes which made her fast 
would last all day. 

It was our uttermost port of call, but it was 
destined to be a sojourn reasonably prolonged and 
sufhcient to give all hands a chance for pilgrimage 
into the remote interior of Costa Rica.^ 

^ Costa Rica is a republic lying between Nicaragua and Panama, 
containing about 22,000 square miles and divided into seven prov- 
inces, with a total population of about half a million. Owing to the 
great differences in altitude due to the highly mountainous character 
of the country, climatic conditions and vegetation are remarkably 
varied. The loftiest peaks are well over 11,000 feet, and at least four 
of these mountains are still actively volcanic at infrequent periods. 
The original settlement of Costa Rica as a colony of Spain was made 
in 1540; and down practically to 1821 its existence was perhaps the 
most wretchedly miserable among many such colonies in Spanish 
possessions. In the year last mentioned, Costa Rica traded her 
dependence upon Spain for voluntary dependence upon Mexico — 
and still later formed one of a congeries of weak Central American 



IN COSTA RICA 91 

The literature dispensed by the United Fruit 
Company invites you to believe that the name of 
Port Limon signifies "citrus fruits." This seems 
to me an unworthy attempt to disguise by a eu- 
phemism the fact that it really means "Port 
Lemon." Why not face the truth? 

To be sure, the name of "lemon" has of recent 
years tended to a certain derisive use, but that 
need not divert us from an admiration for the use- 
ful fruit — companion of our summer joys and 
alleviator of our winter ills. Undoubtedly the 
lemon is a sour thing, especially after it has been 
kept. Right off the tree it is not half bad. Besides, 
I do not now recall that I saw a single lemon grow- 
ing in Costa Rica, whereof Port Limon is an im- 
portant eastern outlet. But that does n't prove 
that there are no lemon groves there. 

I am not so sure that Port Limon comes by its 

states unconnected with the Mexican rule; but in 1830 complete 
independence was established, and since that time, largely because of 
the intelligent fostering of banana culture by American capital, the 
prosperity of the land has immeasurably increased. It is the boast 
of Costa Ricans that their political system has been less the subject of 
revolutionary change than is true in some of the neighboring coun- 
tries; but it is to be recorded that the president mentioned in the 
following pages was ousted by proceedings more or less revolutionary, 
though bloodless, in 1917, leaving the world in some doubt as to the 
actual stability of republican government there. There is a single- 
chamber Congress of forty-three members, and the president, theo- 
retically, holds for a four-year term. Bananas, cocoa, coffee, hides, 
lumber, and some precious ores form the bulk of the exports. 



92 SAILING SOUTH 

name without certain other reasons. As a harbor 
it leaves much to be desired. It is not exactly a 
harbor, anyway. A point of land and a rather im- 
mature island afford all the shelter there is, and 
under the impulse of the northeast trade there is 
generally a heavy swell running into the bay, which 
makes the steamers heave and strain at their 
hawsers even when made fast to the pier. I have 
seen better protected anchorages than those af- 
forded by the roadstead off Limon. However, we 
must take creation as it is handed over to us. Limon 
is the eastern terminus of the transcontinental 
railroad system of Costa Rica — total length of 
said system about two hundred miles. From what 
I hear, Limon is a good deal nicer place than is the 
Pacific terminal, Punta Arenas (Sandy Point). 

Away down there in the tropics, say ten degrees 
north of the Equator, it is bound to be hot all the 
year round. Limon is usually cooking, steaming 
hot. We found it so even at nine in the morning 
when we descended the ship's side and walked a 
quarter-mile along the cement docks to reach the 
mainland proper. A sunshade was in order, and as 
Xenophon observed during the celebrated march 
of the Ten Thousand, "it was for a protection if 
one journeyed with something black before his 
eyes." The sun glared down on the concrete and 



IN COSTA RICA 93 

shimmered from the inevitable corrugated iron 
roofs. But once the town was reached, there ap- 
peared a marvelous Httle park, hard by the sea, in 
the depths of which there was darkness and cool 
shade. After the long and torrid promenade along 
the wharves this, to quote Browning's Croisic pilot, 
was "Paradise for Hell." The ladies of the party 
disappeared into the welcome shadow of the palms 
and eucalypti with shrill psalms of delight. For the 
men there was a man's work to be done in the way 
of buying railroad tickets for the journey up to 
San Jos4. 

I should explain that Costa Rica is the next 
country west of the Republic of Panama, occupying 
the entire continent — or what remains of it at 
that point — ■ between the Atlantic and Pacific. It 
is a bit wider than the Isthmus, but still not ter- 
ribly wide. What it lacks in breadth, however, it 
makes up in thickness. It boasts a stretch of 
coastal plain on either sea, and then rises abruptly 
into mountains that richly deserve the name. In- 
domitable industry — personified by the Fruit 
Company in this case — has constructed a railroad 
leading up from the coast into the upland of the 
interior; and indomitable perseverance — also per- 
sonified by the United Fruit — keeps the railroad 
there. This is no light task in a country where 



94 SAILING SOUTH 

earthquakes are common and rainy seasons preva- 
lent; for the railroad follows a river bottom up the 
steep sides of a trio of volcanic peaks, and it is sub- 
ject to vehement changes of grade without notice. 
Washouts are the chief trouble, as at some seasons 
they are of almost daily occurrence. Now and 
again transit is interrupted for weeks at a time. 
The journey of one hundred and seven miles from 
Limon to San Jos6 requires about six hours. 

Now the good ship Metapan was due to lie at 
Limon four days loading bananas for the people of 
the United States; and as no one who could help it 
wanted to stick around and bake in Limon for so 
long a time, the ship's company all sought the rail- 
road station in a body. The ticket-office, of course, 
was not open. If you have had experience with 
Spanish countries you would know that without my 
telling you. In Spain the ticket-seller opens his 
wicket about fifteen minutes before the train is 
due to leave, and no sooner, even if he knows there 
is a file outside as long as the breadline, or a queue 
waiting to buy tickets for the World's Series. 
Wherefore, as I said, there was a man's work to be 
done. The Mogul and I deployed stragetically, and 
let the line form. I hunted around the depot plat- 
form until I had located a most obliging young man ' 
of American appearance who said he would tele- 




IN THE BANANA COUNTRY 



IN COSTA RICA 95 

phone inside to the ticket-agent and arrange for 
our seats in the observation car. The Mogul, his 
pockets full of letters to the local authorities, had 
meantime disappeared in the head office of the 
company. It was he who did the real business; for 
presently he emerged tattooed all over with the 
courtesies of the road, the freedom of this and all 
other cities, an assurance of rooms in San Jose's 
leading hotels, a prospect of personal introduction 
to the President of the Republic, and the comfort- 
able knowledge that for to-day at least neither his 
money nor mine was any good whatever. No one 
would take it. Not without reason do I refer to 
him as the Mogul. 

Then the train backed in. If the railroad at 
Panama had been wider than any road I ever saw 
before, this one was narrower than most. The rails 
were one yard apart. It resembled very much to 
the eye the railroad that runs down to Revere Beach 
and Lynn, and I heard the conductor address the 
engineer by the highly Oriental name of Mike. 
There was an immediate and perspiring rush for 
the cars. There was a jumble of suitcases, porters, 
and passengers in the narrow aisles. Yet by some 
magic the snarl was all untangled and we were per- 
fectly ready to go not more than five minutes after 
the scheduled hour for starting. A momentary 



96 SAILING SOUTH 

confusion, indeed, was caused by the announce- 
ment that Verdun had fallen — because one of the 
party was a French patriot and fainted away at 
the news. But when a breathless young man a 
moment later dashed in with the glad news that 
this report was untrue, he revived; and the train 
clacked out of the yard headed for the hills. 

For perhaps twenty-five miles the railroad ran 
through a riotously fertile plain given over to 
banana culture. For a considerable proportion of 
the way the line skirted the sea. To the right, 
rows of enormous breakers rushed rank after rank 
upon the beach and roared in foam almost up to 
the line of rails. To the left was the density of the 
jungle, broken here and there by clearings. Ba- 
nanas were everywhere. On the whole the banana 
tree is not a tidy one. Its broad leaves break off 
and turn brown. The fruit itself is usually a nau- 
seous green — for bananas are never shipped ripe 
and those that ripen on the tree for local con- 
sumption are not noticeably numerous, and in- 
deed are inferior in flavor. However, I wish to say 
here and now, before I forget it, that one who has 
never eaten bananas that have at least ripened on 
their native heath has never really eaten the food 
that the gods must live upon. 

A tattered darkey hung precariously to the outer 



IN COSTA RICA 97 

edge of the rear observation platform as the train 
clattered up the line, his mouth full of bits of paper. 
Now and again he cast one of these into the dust 
behind us. It was as if he expected to leave a clue 
for the uses of a game of hare-and-hounds. Ex- 
amination revealed, however, that these bits of 
paper were notices to the local planters that the 
Metapan would take all the bananas they would 
bring to the wharf on the following Friday. This 
haphazard general notice appeared to be the regular 
thing, for repeatedly figures emerged from the 
undergrowth and gathered the papers in. 

Periodically the train rattled through a wayside 
town. These towns were all alike. There was no 
street, save that afforded by the railroad. The 
houses — little more than shacks — stood in a 
single file on either side. Negroes, presumably 
from Jamaica, inhabited them. All the houses 
stood on stilts, as in Panama. Occasionally would 
flash by a tiny "cantina," where liquid refresh- 
ment was dispensed, usually bearing a pious name 
like "Madre de Dios" (Mother of God) after the 
Spanish fashion — or else "The Purified Martyrs," 
or "Nombre de Dios," or something equally im- 
pressive. The nomenclature of the Latin saloon is 
as pietistic as you can imagine. 

The observation car on the single daily train — 



98 SAILING SOUTH 

there is but one — holds itself out to a deluded 
world as a "buffet" car. I had visions of broiled 
chicken, or deviled ham sandwiches, and such viands 
— but later had occasion to be glad that we had 
brought some food along from the ship. The 
"buffet" in that car consists entirely of an ice- 
tank, in which is a limited supply of White Rock, 
ginger ale, and a few bottles of beer. Along about 
eleven o'clock the conductor comes by and whispers 
that the next junction (named by the Mogul, 
"Banana Split") will afford a chance to alight and 
secure a real luncheon — the train halting there 
for ten gormandizing minutes. He can provide you 
with the necessary liquid to wash down the lunch — 
but no more. Whereupon you search your pockets 
and make a brave attempt to master the coinage of 
the country, to the end that the inner man may be 
fed. The coinage of Costa Rica is not an altogether 
simple matter, chiefly because of the depreciated 
character of it. As in Panama, the average vendor 
quotes you a price in "gold" — meaning thereby 
lawful money of the United States, which every one 
is mighty glad to get. If you happen to have 
colones — the native dollar is called a colon, in a 
zealous but rather futile effort to honor the great 
discoverer — you will find that the colon is n't 
worth much over forty-two cents, even in the 



IN COSTA RICA 99 

flattering estimation of its own creators and sponsors. 
It is the same all through Central America, I sup- 
pose. At present, for example, the Mexicans would 
regard the offer of $50,000 for the capture of such 
an outlaw as Villa as meaning something like 
$2,000,000 in the Carranzista currency. If you take 
a five-dollar American bill to a grocer in Colombia 
and buy a ham with it, you will need to cart away 
the change in a dray. 

Somehow or other people managed to secure 
fruit of the women who besieged the train at the 
restaurant station. I suspect they paid for their 
bananas about double what they would have paid 
in New York. The difficulty was that of finding 
any coin small enough to serve. However, if the 
bananas were costly they were worth it. I never 
saw such bananas — just ripe, and fairly bursting 
their yellow skins; only the Mogul had ordered 
some beer for me, and then unkindly remembered 
that if you eat a banana after drinking beer you will 
surely have a calentura, and most likely will die. I 
suspect a calentura is a euphemism for a pain in the 
midriff. Certainly it sounds better — and sounds 
rather fatal, too. The others ate all the bananas, 
but I was consoled by the promise of Senor P. — 
a local magnate on his way home — that when we 
got to Turrialba he would treat the entire train to 



100 SAILING SOUTH 

such pineapples as had never been tasted by one of 
us before. He was right, too. 

The railroad turned inland when it met the rapid 
torrent of the Rio Rivenzon. At the moment the 
latter was merely a perfectly respectable river, but 
that was because of the fact that it was the (com- 
paratively) dry season. A little later the rains 
would begin and the stream must then increase. Its 
name is said to imply a sort of explosively impetu- 
ous quality, and it has also a nickname no less ex- 
pressive — the "Toro Amarillo" or "Yellow Bull." 
At wet seasons it is prone to take great bites out of 
the banks in entire disregard of the railroad com- 
pany's easement-of-way, so that passengers are 
compelled to walk gingerly around the newest 
cave-in. Even in the dry period we found several 
places where the track lay crazily across improvised 
revetments, and at such points "Mike" prudently 
slowed his train to a mere walk. Rivulets came 
streaming down the sides of the ravines and flowed 
amiably along between the rails. I do not wonder 
that they have washouts on this road; rather do I 
wonder that they ever have anything else. 

Fortunately it was not ever thus. When we had 
passed the worst of the places we began to climb — 
a steady, chugging sort of climb, always following 
the sinuosities of the valley, but making at every 



IN COSTA RICA loi 

bend a gain upward. A straight bit of track was 
very rare, indeed. The line curved continually as it 
ascended, and terrifying depths began to yawn be- 
low. The train clung to a mere shelf over the abyss 
— an abyss filled so full of amazing trees that one 
wondered how the land nourished them all. Some 
of these trees were said to be mahogany — a fact 
that surprised me because somehow I had never 
expected to see mahogany in any form but that of 
chairs and tables and highboys. Also there was 
eucalyptus — more familiar in the form of oil. 

At last the train attained an altitude well above 
the timber-line, and for the steaming heat of the 
tropics, we now exchanged to the delights of a balmy 
upland springtime. True, one could still look down 
into tremendous vales where, far beneath, there 
rioted a tropic vegetation; but the immediate en- 
vironment was that of the temperate zone and 
every one felt himself revived. Turrialba found us 
at twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, and its 
ripe pineapples beggared the vocabulary of eulogy, 
just as Senor P. had promised. I pity you ■ — for 
unless you have been in Turrialba you do not know 
pineapples at all! The thing you call a pineapple 
might as well be exactly that — a dry, wooden 
thing, sprayed with flavoring extract. At Turrialba, 
which is a hamlet on the side of an extinct volcano 



102 SAILING SOUTH 

of the same name, they have the genuine article, 
creamy in texture, dripping with juices, and possibly 
the original of the nectar-and-ambrosia with which 
Father Zeus and his celestial company once re- 
freshed themselves. They call it a pina (peenyah) 
— which sounds more like the taste. I rejoice in 
retrospect partly because of the lively memory of 
the flavor, and partly because there is no silly local 
superstition against consuming pina after having 
partaken of malt. 

So far as concerns mere altitude, Turrialba is low 
down. You naturally seem to be pretty well up in 
the world at twenty-five hundred feet' — but the 
real climb is yet to come. You've got to be carried 
up over the shoulder of Irazii — a volcano which, 
alas, is not extinct at all — until you reach Cartago 
at an elevation of about fifty-eight hundred feet. 
As you go upward, the views become increasingly 
magnificent, as a matter of course. The valleys be- 
low your feet broaden into colossal bowls rimmed 
by ragged peaks. You lose the river. You begin to 
catch glimpses toward the west that betoken the 
near approach of the continental divide and the 
facilis descensus of the Pacific slope. 

Cartago, on the summit of the ridge, is stupid to 
a degree, because it is growing up anew from a 
ruin, like weeds on a burned grassplot. Not so 



IN COSTA RICA 103 

many years ago Irazu wakened from his dream and 
erupted. The particular Titan pinned beneath the 
mountain must have stirred and turned over, with 
disastrous results to Cartago. That classically 
named city was "delenda-ed" with a comprehen- 
siveness that even the exacting Cato would have 
approved. Hundreds of people were killed, and few 
of the old buildings survived. The town is growing 
up again, but is too much given to corrugated iron 
— locally regarded, it would seem, as God's last, 
best gift to man. Further, the town is inhabited 
exclusively by boys. I know this because I saw 
them. They were all at the station. They subsist 
by selling cakes of a fearful and wonderful kind to 
incautious tourists who are deaf to all warnings 
against calentura. Their lung-power is unsurpassed. 
Nature intended them for auctioneers. 

From this point onward the journey is easy. 
San Jos6 lies only a dozen more miles to the west 
and perhaps one thousand feet lower down, in a 
sort of vast interior basin between huge mountain 
ranges. The farms begin to reveal coffee-trees 
rather than bananas, although there are still ba- 
nanas. Sefior P. showed us his own plantation and 
was electrified to sudden frenzy by seeing his son 
and daughter — choice selections out of a flourish- 
ing family of eleven — wildly chasing the train on 



I04 SAILING SOUTH 

foot. They had come out to meet father — and the 
train for some reason had failed to stop at their pair 
of bars for the first time in recorded history. Noth- 
ing could be done, of course, for the train was run- 
ning downhill by now and was intent on getting 
home to its supper; so there was naught for the 
disconsolate seiior to do but curse the railroad com- 
pany with truly Spanish- American fervor until the 
engine drew panting into the station of San Jos6. 

And what a landing it was ! The station was full 
of people, chiefly delegations to meet the Mogul and 
assure him that abundant rooms had been reserved 
for his use and behoof in divers hotels. Seven cities 
claimed Old Homer dead — but, thanks to the of- 
ficial interest which the Mogul had awakened in 
Limon, seven hotels now fought for his body, living. 
It was what is called, I believe, in our French 
quarters an embarras de richesses. 

Never have I been more deeply impressed by the 
master mind. The Mogul solved all difficulties by 
simply going to a hostelry whence no runner ap- 
peared to claim him — meantime commending the 
warring porters to the inundation of tourists all 
about us who had made no reservations and were 
fair game. Nor did we regret it. The hotels of 
San Jos4 are without exception bad. Human tes- 
timony is convincing to that effect. But to the 



IN COSTA RICA 105 

little outlying casa de huespedes — it would be a 
" boarding-house" in our unpoetic English speech — 
which the Mogul selected as our abode, I here and 
now take off my hat. It was a haven of rest in a 
weary land, and the Sefiorita Montealegre has a 
cook who is beyond praise. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SAN JOS£ 

SAN JOSE is a one-story town. By this I mean 
no disrespect to the capital and chief city of 
the Costa Ricans. There is all the difference in the 
world between a one-story town and a one-horse 
town. I say that San Jos6 is a one-story town be- 
cause that is literally — or almost literally — true. 

The reason is the prevalence of earthquakes. 
These are of very frequent occurrence. In fact I 
suspect that a veracious seismograph would testify 
that the surface of the country is almost never quite 
still. There must be almost perpetual tremors, 
whereof only the greater ones are seriously felt. 

Three young men, clerks in local banks and con- 
sulates, whom I found sitting on Sefiorita Monteal- 
egre's "piazza" when I emerged from a hasty ab- 
lution after a day on the train, began forthwith to 
enlighten me as to the latest big shock, which had 
occurred on the previous Sunday. It had, they 
said, lasted a "full minute" — with subsequent 
tremors enduring for nearly an hour. The sensation 
was that of being on the deck of a ship at sea. Men 
walking the streets suddenly staggered as if drunk, 



SAN ]OSt 107 

and extended their arms involuntarily, as rope- 
dancers do. One of them said that after this fu- 
nambulatory experience he was downright seasick 
and had n't felt well since. It made me rather 
timorous, for I was never in an earthquake but 
once, and I did n't like it, even then. Visitors in 
Costa Rica are always terrified at the thought of 
quakes. As for the natives, they have by no means 
gotten used to tremhlements de terre and most of 
them, as I found, were quite willing to confess that 
they, too, were always afraid. Why not? 

I may as well own up now that we experienced 
no earthquake at all while in the city. I lived in 
hourly expectation, but none came. It seemed en- 
tirely natural that there should be such things, 
however, since from our veranda one could see the 
summits of three volcanoes, only technically ex- 
tinct. Irazii, the biggest, had proved its content of 
fire within a few years by destroying Cartago, the 
next considerable town. The middle mountain 
seemed to be very quiet. The third ■ — it had a 
name something like "Boaz," so that I named the 
middle one "Ruth" — was smoking behind a veil 
of cloud. All three sloped in a tremendous incline 
from the depths of a tiny intervening valley. Over 
toward the south, where lay the main part of the 
city, there was a broad plain — a lofty plateau 



io8 SAILING SOUTH 

something like forty-five hundred feet above the 
sea — extending to the feet of some other, but not 
volcanic, mountains of conspicuous ruggedness. 
This plain, I found, was the very heart of Costa 
Rica, sheltering the one considerable city and the 
chief province. In all, however, there are five states 
in the republic, and two petty divisions known as 
comarcas. I discover, now that it is too late to do 
me any good, that when I was in Limon I was in a 
comarca. It adds to my retrospective bliss. 

It must be rather difficult business to make a 
tour of the several Costa Rican states. The chief 
reason is that there are no roads at all. The rail- 
road — very precarious in its existence owing to 
the rains and the quakes — is the one means of 
communication between the capital and either 
ocean. Most of the states are entirely apart from it 
and must be reached either by riding on horseback 
over rough trails or else, as the president later in- 
formed me, by going "up the rivers in a gasoline." 

The total population is about 400,000 I believe, 
whereof about 40,000 live in San Jos6. Until quite 
recently revolutions were never indulged in, and 
upon this fact Costa Rica has prided herself. The 
altogether charming Senorita A., with whom I 
talked and who had been educated in "the States," 
laid due stress on this fact. "That's where we have 



SAN JOSfi 109 

something on Nicaragua," she glibly said. "They 
are always fighting. We never do!" 

I commented on the ease with which she had 
tossed off the idiomatic expression "having some- 
thing on," and asked if her vocabulary included any 
other Americanisms. "Ah, yes," she answered: 
"When I was in New Jersey they taught me to say, 
'Hang a piece of crape on his nose; his brains are 
dead!'" (My country! O my country!) 

Most of the better-class Costa Ricans — and 
they are a thrifty people who understand money- 
making and gentle living ■ — are educated in Europe 
or America. The result is that English is widely 
spoken, and one whose Spanish is rusty has but 
little difficulty in "getting around." Mine is as 
rusty as it can be and still remain Spanish. At- 
tempts to use it on shopmen, cabbies, and the local 
police were invariably disastrous. And, by the way, 
since I have mentioned the police, let me say that 
one of the proofs offered to demonstrate the law- 
abiding quality of the native is that the night force 
now carries "only a single-shot rifle instead of a 
repeating Winchester" ! I submit that for what it is 
worth. No doubt the rifles are but seldom used — 
but if a couple of natives, full of supper and dis- 
tempering draughts, happen to fall upon each other 
with machetes, a constabulary weapon capable of 



no SAILING SOUTH 

being operated with effect from a distance must be 
desirable. 

One may speak with but little assurance on a three 
days' acquaintance, but at all events in the three 
days I saw no such disorder and no public drunken- 
ness. The latter, of course, does exist, as it always 
must in a land where native wines are unknown and 
where recourse is had by the joyous celebrant to 
potent distillations. The drawback about Latin- 
America is its lack of any comparatively harmless 
beverage and the common decision to substitute 
raw brandy for lesser alcoholics. Aguardiente must 
be as deadly as it sounds. 

p- I was awakened on the first morning in town by a 
sound of wheels in the street below, and looked out. 
It was an impressive sight. The garbage man was 
abroad on his scavenging rounds. Ahead of his open 
wagon walked in a sober platoon four enormous 
vultures, all in sable and maintaining the chastened 
demeanor of undertakers at an open grave. Behind 
the wagon walked half a dozen other vultures, 
similarly sedate. And around the rim of the cart, 
perched in a solemn row, sat twenty-one other birds 
of the same species and same somber hue. I would 
fain have immortalized the scene, but the camera, 
alas, was n't loaded. I began to understand why 
the streets of San Jos6, which leave much to be 



SAN JOSE III 

desired in other respects, are at least so notably 
clean. The buzzards attend to that! 

Your chief impression of the streets, after their 
cleanliness, is that they are rough. The rains, so 
heavy and frequent in their season, naturally wash 
much of the surfacing away and macadam is only 
beginning to be laid with scientific regard to tar and 
oil binders. If you take a carriage, at six colones an 
hour, you will appreciate the ruggedness of the 
highways even more surely than if you walk; and 
if you talk ambitiously about motoring outside the 
town you will be told that there's no road to motor 
on. I caught one glimpse of the rugged highway 
that leads over to Cartago and decided then and 
there against venturing it in an automobile. On 
horseback one might make the trip, or in one of 
those curious local ox-carts with perfectly solid 
wheels made of disks cut from a giant tree. But of 
real carriage road there is none in Costa Rica and 
there will be none for years. 

People are beginning to wake up to the necessity 
for them, it is true, and one hears grumbling over 
the folly of having a $2,000,000 opera-house (which 
they have) as contrasted with feasible state high- 
ways (which they have not). It seems absurd, 
truly, to have a national theater so magnificent and 
costly that it can almost never be opened for use — 



112 SAILING SOUTH 

and then only with a government subsidy to import 
actors and singers. Yet San Jos6, while apologizing 
for her extravagance in this regard, is still genuinely 
proud of the white-elephant theater and lets you 
walk in and look at it. It is one of the few two-story 
buildings in town, and it is certainly magnificent. 
The marbles are the choicest. The mural decoration 
is superb. The earthquakes have thus far spared it. 
In past years it was used for the grand presidential 
ball — but a young and thrifty administration is 
now in power which refuses to give any such party, 
so that even this delight is suspended for the nonce. 
Occasionally the theater is used for competitions 
among local poets, who read their effusions in public 
and are rewarded with sprigs of bay, or wild olive, 
in truly Olympic fashion. 

•- Of course the Mogul had letters to local potentates 
and their effect was far-reaching. They led first 
of all to a gayly caparisoned barouche that drove up 
the next day to take us on a tour of the town. On 
the box were two young natives in livery, with white 
duck trousers and "tall hats answering to the name 
of Fido," in the playful language of Irvin Cobb. 
As we clattered off through the undulating streets, 
past the rest of the ship's people we felt very haughty, 
indeed. Later on, an audience was arranged for us 
with the youthful president (since incontinently de- 



SAN JOS£ 113 

posed) hight Gonzales. (Maybe you did n't know 
his name? I did n't before; nor yet did the Mogul. 
But we covered our ignorance by the simple expe- 
dient of finding out from the sefiorita at our pension 
before we were ushered into the presence-chamber !) 
' The president abides in a pleasant official man- 
sion over on the easterly side of the city. There are 
gardens blazing with tropical flowers outside and 
walks shaded by rows of royal palms. We were 
ushered, as I said, into the presence-chamber and 
found it a tremendous room, decorated in a rich red 
brocade, with a regiment or two of red chairs rearing 
up on slender gilt legs all over the place. You know 
the kind. No real palace could exist without them. 
I began to wish I had worn my dress-suit. The chief 
local pundit, X., who went with us attired in the 
uniform of a captain of industry, felt quite at home. 
The Mogul and I sat gingerly down on the edge of 
two chairs apiece, it being deemed safer to distribute 
weight on things so beautifully frail. 

I expected a blare of trumpets and a bit of sing- 
ing as the prelude to the official entrance. It would 
have harmonized with the chairs. But instead a 
clerk led President Gonzales down from his offices 
to meet us — and a very attractive young gentle- 
man he turned out to be. He seemed to have at- 
tained that age that Boston ladies refer to coyly as 



114 SAILING SOUTH 

" between thirty-five." He had a winning smile, good 
teeth, becoming clothes, and was in all respects 
debonair. He inquired if we spoke Spanish; and 
the Mogul answered, in his most fluent Castilian, 
"No." Whereupon the president immersed us in 
another effulgent smile and graciously said that he 
would try to speak English — which he did indiffer- 
ent well. It was, at all events, a much better medium 
of exchange than our Spanish would have been. One 
can't talk to a full-fledged president about "hot 
water" and "How much does that cost?" and "Sir, 
we wish a room with two beds" ; and my Spanish is 
only about as good as that. 

Prodded now and then by the interpretative X., 
we made shift to converse for upward of half an hour. 
As I recall it we talked chiefly of the weather, and 
how nice it was to be in San Jos6, and how desolated 
we should be when we had to go. None of us knew 
quite how to close the interview. I waited for the 
president to rise, extend his hand to be kissed, and 
intimate that we might back out of the room. Since 
he gave no sign, I looked helplessly at the Mogul and 
found him looking helplessly at me. X. looked as 
helpless as both of us together. Then, as if touched 
by a spring, we all arose at once, mumbling in 
unison some further commonplaces as to how nice it 
was to be in San Jos6 and how we should hate to go. 



SAN JOSfi 115 

shook hands all round, and emerged into the free 
sunshine. It was unanimously voted that the presi- 
dent was a mighty nice chap, and that an enjoyable 
time had been had by all. X. then ordered the 
liveried coachmen to proceed at a dignified pace to 
the lunatic asylum. 

You will not escape the lunatic asylum in any of 
these Latin countries. In Havana they insisted upon 
showing it, and X. was not going to have us miss the 
one in San Jose. Now that I have seen it, I do not 
blame him. It was a tropical paradise that would 
outshine the finest public garden you ever saw. 
The lunatics were thoughtfully removed to a remote 
part of the establishment, and we were only aware of 
a distant pandemonium of drums mingling with 
faintly audible but blood-curdling shrieks. Emptied 
of its inmates, and peopled only by gentle nuns and 
a no less gentle doctor, it was charming to a degree. 
One thing they certainly do well in Latin- America. 
They look well after the pobrecito loco — the "poor 
little crazy-one." 

I happened to have a loaded camera the day I saw 
the milkman come along. At first sight I thought 
him a cavalry officer. He was on horseback and he 
swung around the corner on the canter, with several 
capacious cans clattering at his saddle-bow. The 
mystery is how the milk escapes being churned to 



ii6 SAILING SOUTH 

butter by the time it reaches the ultimate consumer. 
The reason for going on horseback is, I suppose, that 
the milk route occasionally leads over a way im- 
practicable for wheels. Decidedly the crying need of 
Costa Rica, including San Jos6, is good roads. 

In one other particular, besides having a presi- 
dent living there, San Jos6 is like Washington. It is 
divided into quarters by two great central thorough- 
fares. Each quarter is laid off in squares by high- 
ways that are called "streets" when they run north 
and south, and "avenues" when they run east and 
west. Each series is numbered — not named. Our 
house, for example, was at the corner of First Street 
and Eleventh Avenue, N.W. This is highly scientific 
but I confess I don't like it much. I prize the irregu- 
lar and unscientifically planned town, where the 
streets run crazily and have real names of their own. 
There is a dreary certainty about such things in San 
Jos6. Further, I gathered from directions given me 
by the local police that each block is one hundred feet 
in length. At all events, when I asked for the house 
of Senor X., they told me to go east dos cientos — 
two hundreds — and then south one hundred. 

The monotony of ambulation about the town is 
broken by the amazing quality of the sidewalks. 
These are never very wide — usually, indeed, so 
narrow that two may not walk abreast ; and to make 



SAN JOSE 117 

matters worse, they are often as much as two feet 
above the street level, although this is subject to 
constant variation. One is always going up and 
down steps, and in the dark one must watch out. 
If you meet a lady you jump down into the street, 
taking care not to get into the gutter, which is also 
the sewer. 

San Jos6 has two public squares, or parks, where 
twice a week — now in one and now in the other — 
the municipal band plays. This is as well understood 
an institution as the days of the week and of course 
everybody goes. The one nearest our house has 
four well-marked divisions on each corner, and the 
pavilion for the band is in the center. Whether there 
is any class distinction in the other three I do not 
know, but one of the quarters is by common consent 
frequented by the "better class." There is no rule 
about it — that is to say, no one is excluded. You 
simply know that if you walk through that particular 
square on a concert evening you will find all the 
"real people" there, and in the other corners not 
one of them. 

A bevy of San Josefinas — that is the pretty way 
they have of denominating the girls of the city — 
is an interesting sight. It seems to be locally re- 
garded as the acme of full dress for a festal occasion 
for the girls to take down their hair and let it flow over 



Ii8 SAILING SOUTH 

the shoulders. The "real people," whose daughters 
have been educated abroad, do not do this; in fact 
they turn up their noses and sniff. The local coiffure is 
regarded as indicating an ignorance of the beau monde. 
But this bothers the native San Josefifia not at all, 
and she parades gayly with her friends and with her 
affianced, if she has one, with flowing locks. 

We walked under the shadows of trees while the 
band performed the traditional five selections. It 
was a quiet, well-ordered throng. The girls walked 
to and fro and shook their ringlets provocatively at 
the young men. In a dark corner, on a bench, I 
detected Seiior X. and Seiiorita Y., gazing into each 
other's eyes and shyly conversing. It pleased me; 
for I knew by local gossips that papa did not ap- 
prove, and it gave color to the sage remark of the 
adorable Sefiorita A. ■ — she of the sophisticated 
American idiom — that she "rather guessed they'd 
pull it off in spite of the old man." They did, too, 
later on — and I have no doubt will live happily 
ever after. 

No earth tremors were experienced during the 
brief time that we remained in San Jos6, but rumor 
said that in the interval the railroad down toward 
Turrialba had washed away again. This being a mere 
commonplace the line was in working order next 
day — and it was both possible and necessary to 



SAN JOSE: 119 

revert to Limon and the ship. Those in charge of 
her had not been idle. She was loaded to capacity 
with bananas and it seemed impossible to afford ac- 
commodation to anything more. Nevertheless the 
captain, in the goodness of his soul, yielded to the 
importunities of an itinerant circus which was 
stranded at the port and admitted for passage back 
to the Isthmus a choice collection of weary animals, 
horses, and performers of various descriptions. The 
latter berthed themselves as best they could for a 
night on the tables and sofas of the saloon. The 
animals, including one giraffe and what the late 
A. Ward would have described as "2 moral bares," 
lent color and other things to the open spaces adja- 
cent to the fo'c'sle. I doubt that any more pictur- 
esque shipload has ever committed itself to the mer- 
cies of the deep since the days of Father Noah. Dis- 
quieting visions of what might happen if we ran 
into a storm were dispelled by the captain's bluff 
assurance that there "never was any wind in here" 
— and in truth we sailed to Cristobal over a glassy 
sea, disgorging our acrobats and menagerie without 
untoward incident in the morning to delight the 
inhabitants of two coasts. It required little more than 
an hour. And by night Cristobal was for us no more 
than a faint glare against a tropic sky as the prow 
turned again toward the Polar star. 



PART TWO 
PORTO RICO 



CHAPTER IX 
PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 

YOU might think it an easy and simple thing to 
make a pilgrimage, even in war-time, from New- 
York to a dependency of the United States so near 
at hand as Porto Rico — but it was not ; and unless 
things have improved since the war it is n't even now 
as simple as it was before. 

Theoretically, as you are at no time out of our 
glorious jurisdiction, you need no passport. If you 
did, it would be more of a ceremony than it is. Any 
one who has asked for a passport recently must 
know that the only thing harder to obtain is passage 
for a camel "through the knee of an idol," as the 
late Mr. Nye somewhere remarks. Of course there 's 
a reason. The Germans began to abuse our easy- 
going passport system at the outset of the war; and 
before our Government was fully awake they had 
flooded the world with spurious documents which 
made an infinitude of trouble. Then the screws went 
on. Passports were issued only for limited terms and 
after the most painstaking scrutiny of the applicant; 
moreover, confining the scope of the permit to a very 
limited area of the earth's crust. One is glad this was 



124 SAILING SOUTH 

done — but personally it involves inconveniences. 

If you seek a passport now the resultant inquisi- 
tion is likely to make you feel that you 're a poten- 
tial impostor whether you are or not. The very fact 
that you desire a passport seems to be prima-facie 
evidence against you. Who are you, anyway? Are 
you who you say you are? Prove it to us! Show us 
your picture! Tell us where you were born — and 
where your parents were bom. Get a bona-fide wage- 
earner to vouch for you. Why must you travel? 
Why not stay at home? Are you really sure you are 
not a spy? Bow-wow-wow! However, if this ordeal 
suffices to keep down the number of the idly curious 
who would otherwise go to Europe before Europe 
is ready for company, it is n't altogether amiss. But 
it is suspected that it discourages too few who really 
ought to be discouraged. I know it frightened me. 

I selected Porto Rico as a place which the Gov- 
ernment would probably not care too much about. 
It seemed rather like going to Chicago. But some- 
where there is a magic in the fact that you go thither 
on a boat. The Government is not incurious about 
you, after all. 

At any rate, the steamer company gave me a long 
printed sheet of instructions as to what must be 
done before any one could be allowed to sail. Thanks 
to the armistice, the requirements that you get the 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 125 

gracious permission of your local draft board to leave 
the confines of the State had been done away — 
but there was enough left. You had to secure per- 
mission from the immigration authorities — and 
that was only one degree less difficult than to get a 
sure-enough passport from Washington. It meant 
that you 'd got to go to the deputy's office in Nassau 
Street, produce a sheaf of photographs, make out a 
questionnaire as long as the moral law giving facts 
about your ancestors unto the third and fourth 
generation, bring satisfactory evidence of citizen- 
ship, produce a well-known citizen of the United 
States who had known you for three or four years 
to swear to your identity — and then, if all went 
well, the office would give you a permit card. 

Then, at least fifty-seven and a half hours before 
sailing, you must take that card to the custom house 
of the port, undergo a thorough examination, get 
it what the Government calls "visaed," and possibly 
you might be allowed to sail. 

I came near giving it up. All this looked like a 
mountain; and besides, the winter was so open that 
it seemed silly to go south. But I 'd talked it over 
with the Mogul, and he was bound we should go. 
Besides, the M.'s wanted to go — after first talking 
about residual floating mines and the suicidal folly 
of the whole business. So I took my courage in 



126 SAILING SOUTH 

both hands and went through the mill. This is the 
story thereof. If you have had experience with such 
things you will know it was n't nearly so terrible as 
it sounded. 

Getting the photographs was the worst part. The 
regulations are terribly specific about those. They 
tell you that the picture must have light background 
— and being a blond I always take a poor picture 
against anything but a really dark black. Then they 
insist that the face of the subject must be at least one 
inch and a half long in the finished picture; that the' 
negative mustn't be retouched; that the paper 
must be of a certain specified thinness ; that you will 
need three pictures; and that the complete picture 
must n't on any account be any bigger than just 
so and so. It seemed that no photographer could 
guarantee all this. However, you have to take a 
chance. So I found a little wayside booth in Sixth 
Avenue, presided over by a genial Yiddish gentle- 
man who advertised by displaying a hideous blue 
light in his window and a sign saying that he knew 
all about passport pictures. There are a million of 
these in the United States, more or less. 

I went in. The proprietor sat me down in a sort of 
electric chair and turned on his lights. The others 
stood around and watched, but they said they could 
hardly bear it. Under that ghastly blue glare you 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 127 

don't exactlj^ look as if you were dead — you look 
"considerably more than that," like Huckleberry 
Finn's "sick Arab." 

The artist squinted at me through his camera, 
issued a series of conflicting orders as to which way 
I was to look, told me not to assume quite so austere 
an expression — and finally took the picture. He 
also took Katrina's. I wish you could see them — 
or rather I am glad you can't! Katrina looks like 
a cigarette girl from Carmen — a person with no 
principle or reputation whatever. As for me, the 
photographer shuddered as if in pain when he 
produced the completed photographs, and ducked 
prudently as he handed them across the counter. I 
looked, in the picture, like the Wrath of Heaven. 

Naturally I hated to show those things to the 
immigration officer. Nothing was more clear than 
that the inspector would say I was an anarchist with 
a prison record. I should n't have blamed him. 

But the inspector proved to be a nice man. He 
lives in a skyscraper downtown, near the haunts of 
the Money Power. You ascend in a crowded eleva- 
tor. It is now about ten in the forenoon, say — the 
hour at which New York really begins to think about 
work. You are disgorged on the dozenth floor into 
a corridor which appears to be filled with waiting 
Bolsheviks. They have been marshaled in what the 



128 SAILING SOUTH 

British call a "queue" — a discouragingly long and 
disgustingly smelly queue ■ — and of course you 
think you are in for six hours of standing in line. 

But the elevator boy is wise for one so young. 
He says, "Say, fella, what do you want? Just an 
application, ain't it? Well, just you go right in!" 
So you push your way up to the head of the line, 
pursued by a roar of protest in a dozen different 
languages from the assembled Bolsheviki. It is 
rough work — but needs must when the devil 
drives ! I can't see that any one has any right to do 
it, strictly, because all any of those fellows want is 
"an application." I am grateful, however, to that 
mendacious elevator boy, because what otherwise 
might have taken me six hours really took only 
about thirty minutes. 

I said the inspector was a nice man. He was all of 
that. He rushed me off to a corner, spread some 
blanks before me, gave me a bad pen, and told me 
to write my history. I knew how he felt. I *ve served 
on legal advisory boards during the draft, and I know 
that when you get a subject who seems reasonably 
intelligent, so that he can fill out his own cards, it is 
a mercy from heaven as compared with wrestling 
with a man who can't read, write, or even speak 
English. But I was still worried about that repu- 
table New York citizen who would have to swear 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 129 

that he had known me three years — because the 
Mogul was sick at home and I could n't think of any 
other. The inspector waved that aside. He said, 
" I suppose the Missus will swear to you — or at 
you — won't she?" She did. I produced the pho- 
tographs. He pasted them on — merely favoring 
me with a horrid laugh as he looked at mine and 
saying "Gad!" under his breath. 

Katrina swore — but in a different tone of voice 
— as to my identity. She also helped me to make a 
description of my personal appearance, but this in- 
volved some quibbling. I wanted to describe my 
forehead as "broad and noble," nose as "straight," 
eyes as "blue and honest," and certain other flatter- 
ing little touches which seemed to me only my due 
after the libel of that photograph. But Katrina kept 
my feet sternly on the ground, curtailed all the 
descriptive matter, and finally got me passed on to 
an inner chamber where a skeptical young clerk 
and two young women stenographers were sifting 
the sheep from the goats. It was quieter in here and 
not quite so odoriferous. I w4"ote my name across 
the pictures — comprehending now what the idea 
was when they demanded the light background. 
The young man made me swear again — and then 
disfigured my picture still more by whacking a 
rubber stamp which said "Granted" across it. 



130 SAILING SOUTH 

Never mind. It improved the picture, if anything! 

Then we went out. To be sure it was n't all over, 
even yet. I still had to go down to the barge office 
and get the horrible thing "visaed" — and was 
passed from one custom-house officer to another, 
amidst great crowds of steerage applicants, all of us 
seeking permission to leave the U.S.A. I told a 
dozen bored clerks how old I was and where I was 
born. I supplied data as to my father and my 
mother. I confessed that I was merely seeking 
pleasure. I was "visaed," as the Government calls 
it, and stamped and certified, and war-taxed to no 
end. 

Even after being "visaed," you find that there is 
an abundant formality about leaving shore. At 
the dock they stop your cab at the very gates and 
tell you to get out. You enter a rude shed, heated by 
a red-hot stove that was built in 1834. Customs 
officers demand your papers — and look you over to 
see if you resemble the photographs. If you do not 
— which is usually and very fortunately the case — 
you are still passed along. The next man wants to 
see your money. He demands all of it — to see if 
you are supplied with any gold, silver, or certificates 
calling for either. Somehow it appears to be un- 
desirable to let the Porto Ricans have either of those 
useful metals. If you have such money, it is taken 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 131 

away and you are given the kind of bills the Govern- 
ment does permit you to carry — Federal Reserve 
notes, or ordinary bank notes. Possibly this rigor 
has been mitigated since, however. 

Then you go down to the dock waving your per- 
mit card, so all the world may see. And when at last 
you climb the gangplank to the ship, you are solemnly 
warned that the step is irrevocable. Once you go on 
board, you are there to stay! Las date ogni speranza! 
It is as momentous a step as getting married. But 
as you expect no summons to return and as your one 
object is to get away this prospect has no terrors. 
You go aboard ■ — and are a prisoner. No power 
short of Mr. Wilson can get you back on land now. 
It is verhoten. 

But you forget all about these routine bothers 
when at last you are at sea. The air is moist and 
heavy ' — conducive to rest. It is n't like wine in the 
nostrils ; it is more like treacle — or, perhaps better, 
laudanum! Your one wish is to stretch yourself out 
and sleep, save when you get into the wind. The 
latter revives you ■ — and while its influence prevails 
you stand out in the very bow of the ship watching 
the flying fish, exclaiming at the incredible blue of 
the water, and in general chortling over your un- 
expected luck in finding summer so early. 

The bromidioms of the day are: 



132 SAILING SOUTH 

"I don't believe the water's any bluer than that 
in the Mediterranean!" 

"Can you believe this is the last day of Febyou- 
ary?" 

The Brazos on which we sailed had some features 
that appealed to me despite her evident years. Her 
method of calling the devout to meals is a very ex- 
cellent one. No boisterous bugle shatters the tropic 
calm, as on most ships. Instead the patient deck 
steward, whose face and figure recall the Artful 
Dodger, ambles nimbly over the vessel beating a 
melodious zylophone. He plays no real tune, though 
now and then one catches certain phrases that sug- 
gest the leit motif of "I can't get 'em up!" or of 
"Where did you get that hat?" The Mogul who is 
again with us, is entranced by this, which he calls 
"making a joyful noise on an instrument of ten 
slats." 

The stewards are mostly South Americans or 
Porto Ricans — which is to say not negroes, but 
cafe au lait mixtures of Spanish and Indian. They 
are a friendly lot, rather childlike, fairly efficient, 
for Southerners, and chiefly to be criticized for their 
indifference to the bell calls. The process of sum- 
moning spirits from the vasty deep is akin to that of 
getting hot water for your morning shave. You can 
Ccill, easily enough — but will it come when you do 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 133 

summon it? Answer is, No! The deck steward is a 
Cockney — a thin-faced Cockney, who leaves much 
to be desired in the way of performance, but is 
thoroughly satisfactory on his promissory side. 
There are two stewardesses who rival ox-eyed Juno 
and Hebe for personal charm. 

That crabbed but by no means dull philosopher, 
the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, once remarked that a 
man who deliberately confined himself in a ship at 
sea was a fool. ** He would much better be in jail,'* 
thought the Doctor. "For a man in prison has at 
least as much liberty — has better lodging, better 
food, and usually better company." I conclude that 
this dictum is rather amusing than true. I am for- 
ever sentencing myself to voluntary confinement 
aboard ships — and in spite of the fact that there is 
a tinge of verity about Ursa Major's caustic remark, 
we may disregard it as an exaggeration. It is at 
least true only in part. I never saw an entirely ideal 
ship's company yet — but generally you find one or 
two kindred souls. There is bound to be at least one 
venerable sage who voyaged on the ocean when 
steam vessels were young and when side-wheelers 
were plying between New York and Liverpool, 
although this ancient type is disappearing. There is 
bound to be a set unduly devoted to games of chance 
in the smoke-room. There will be some with the loud 



134 SAILING SOUTH 

laugh that speaks the vacant mind, and there is 
almost sure to be one example of "that despicable 
thing called 'the life of the ship.*" But out of the 
average passenger list you will find many who can 
tell you much, and a few who furnish the materials 
for enduring and helpful friendship. 
' In my younger days I had a seafaring uncle who 
sagely advised me not to have anything to do with 
any place where you were absolutely dependent on a 
"bo't" for ingress and egress. He said, and quite 
truly, that this involved a degree of uncertainty and 
frequently labor and sorrow. "Bo'ts" do not run 
with the meager regularity and certitude of express 
trains — and, as we all know, that latter regularity 
leaves something to be desired, even under the benign 
administration of such as the excellent Mr. McAdoo! 
Boats are subject to manifold mischances unknown 
to the land ; and sometimes when you want to take 
one it either Is n't there, or does n't come, or has n't 
any staterooms left. 

When you go to Porto Rico in the present con- 
gested conditions of ocean travel, you will do wisely 
to make absolutely sure of being provided with re- 
turn accommodation before you start. Otherwise 
there may not be enough berths to go 'round and 
you may have to wait over a few ships — of which 
vessels there was only one a week when we were 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 135 

there. I heard many a tale of woe as I later stood in 
line in the steamer office at San Juan, the burden of 
which was that every berth had been booked up 
until the middle of June, "unless some one gives up 
one." The waiting list was already a lengthy affair. 
In that view of it, my uncle was right. A "bo't" is 
a mighty uncertain thing. 

But if I had plenty of money ' — money enough 
and to spare — I cannot conceive of a better place 
wherein to be condemned to stay indefinitely than 
San Juan. I can vouch for it as delightful in climate 
and in almost every other way. But I would advise 
you to make double-sure of your return accommoda- 
tions before you go, in case you are limited as to time. 

Theoretically there are several lines of steamers 
running to Porto Rico. Practically there are n't 
so many. None of the lines can at present boast of 
any capacious ocean-greyhounds ■ — although I sus- 
pect that any of the ships that carry passengers at 
all will be found tolerable enough. Certainly the 
regular line, hight "New York and Porto Rico," 
which operates a passenger ship once in each week 
and which makes the voyage in about five days, 
manages to do pretty well by you. The present 
ships are not very young, but they're competent. 
Not the least comfortable by any means is the very 
oldest of them all — an aged liner that a generation 



136 SAILING SOUTH 

ago plied between New York and England, now 
named "Coamo," but having silverware marked 
"State of California." The worst thing about the 
ships is that they sail from Brooklyn. Once you 
have said that, and once you have made up your 
mind that a vessel of this type is not going to be the 
Mauretania, or the Leviathan, you have prepared 
your soul for what, in ordinary conditions of wind 
and weather, is likely to be an admirable midwinter 
trip to a land of sunshine. 

They that go down to the sea in ships and do 
business in the great waters traditionally know and 
appreciate the wondrous workings of the Lord — . 
but in the past five years they have also learned to 
know and deprecate the evil workings of man. No 
sea has been safe. In addition to the natural hazards 
of wind and wave, fog and fire, there sprang into 
being the dread menaces of the submarine. That's 
all over now — but while it lasted the Porto Rico 
line lost one of the best of its ships. The Carolina 
was torpedoed at sea in 191 6 by a wandering Hun; 
and while most of her people got off safely, a few were 
lost by the upsetting of a boat and the ship herself 
is at the bottom. It was a bad blow to the line, and 
it taught people that by no means all the U-boat 
danger lay in a trip to the other side. For month 
after month those Porto Rico ships toiled to and fro, 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 137 

painted up with blue-and-white camouflage, dark- 
ened at night, guns ever ready, lookouts ever vigilant. 
And to-day, with the camouflage dimly painted out, 
with the lights turned on again, the guns removed 
and the ordinary life of shipboard resumed, they go 
religiously through the boat drill and still make you 
don your life-belt for practice. I appreciate what a 
serious business it must have been through all 
those months; and when one of my fellow-passen- 
gers, grotesquely garbed in his life-preserver and 
standing by his appointed boat, remarked to the 
purser that it "seemed rather a joke," the purser 
looked far away and said, "Well, you know, we 
have n't got back even yet to where we can see the 
joke of it! It was pretty real to us for a good many 
voyages, and the fun of it is hard to see!" 

I asked the skipper if it was n't a relief to have 
the war over and all the strain of it — a foolish 
question, and the bromidic one. He said it was a 
relief — naturally. He had hated running without 
any lights. But still he said he "got kind of used to 
it' — until they signed the armistice and then he 
went all to pieces." I can see that too. To have had 
that awful nightmare, which sat on your shoulder 
night and day for two years, suddenly removed — 
what a reaction must follow ! 

One day we saw a whale. It was close inboard, 



138 SAILING SOUTH 

and it was not only spouting regularly, but was so 
near the surface that now and again its long, black 
body rolled lazily into view on the swells. I suppose 
a year ago the gun crew would have turned loose on 
it at once, just because no one in those days took 
any chances. As it was, we all shrieked, "Whale!" 
And those who had never seen a whale shrieked, 
" Where? Where? " And we who had seen it shouted, 
"There! There! Over by that wave!" — in that 
fatuous way that we always do. A few voyages back 
the passengers would all probably have shouted 
"Submarine!" and dashed for their life-belts. Do 
you remember that thing in Audran's "Olivette" 
about the "Torpedo and the Whale"? They're 
much alike, you know, at a distance. 

So the good ship sailed on and on, and all at once 
the eye of faith discerned what might be land — 
loftily lying — possibly a cloud, but looking re- 
markably like a dim and distant mountain. The 
usual skepticism greeted it, for landsmen never seem 
to recognize their native element at first sight when 
at sea. But it grew and grew, and in a little while it 
was easy to see that the dark blur was really tum- 
bling mountains. At their foot a white line vaguely 
appeared — the city of San Juan. Hour by hour the 
island took shape, and then, minute by minute, the 
buildings on shore disentangled themselves. Morro 



PREPARING FOR PORTO RICO 139 

Castle reared its lighthouse into view — and as dusk 
drew on the lantern began its regular flashings. 
Huge fires of withered sugar cane filled the distant 
shores with drifting smoke. And at the last, with 
the failing sunset glow, the Brazos stole into the 
land-locked harbor, halted, pivoted on her heel ; and 
with the ease and certitude of a harbor steamer en- 
tered her slip, tied up, and signaled "Finished with 
engines" to a faithful but invisible crew. We had 
arrived; and San Juan,, twinkling with lights and 
pallid in the afterglow, stood before us shimmering 
in the warmth of a tropical evening. 



CHAPTER X 

SAN JUAN 

IF it was difficult to get aboard the steamer at 
New York in order to be allowed to depart for 
Porto Rico,^ it was more difficult still to obtain 

* Porto Rico, the smallest of the Greater Antilles, lies one thousand 
miles from Havana and fourteen hundred miles from New York. It 
contains a trifle over three thousand square miles. Columbus visited 
it November 19, 1493, substituting the name San Juan Bautista for 
the native name of Borinquen. Ponce de Leon, who visited the island 
in 1509, discovered gold there and was made governor. Revolts of the 
Indians against the Spaniards led to the virtual extermination of the 
former only a few years later. French, Dutch, and British at various 
times attacked the island, but the territory remained persistently 
Spanish, despite an occasional revolution of abortive character, down 
to the time of the war between Spain and the United States — most 
of this time under a military government, but with a belated auton- 
omy granted as recently as 1897. May 12, 1898, Admiral Sampson 
bombarded the chief city, San Juan, but AVTOught comparatively lit- 
tle damage; and a land force working up from the south reduced the 
island to American possession which was subsequently confirmed by 
the peace protocols. Civil government under the American jurisdic- 
tion was inaugurated in 1900, Charles H. Allen becoming the first 
governor. The governor and other administrative officers are ap- 
pointed by the President of the United States; the legislative body 
consists of a senate of nineteen members and a house of thirty-nine 
— the latter elected by the citizens of the island, who have been 
granted citizenship in the United States as well. The island also has a 
resident commissioner in the United States, chosen for a four-year 
term, who represents Porto Rico in the American Congress. Party 
divisions in the Island Include various brands of home-rulers and 
advocates of entire independence, as well as a party anxious for en- 
larged Americanization. 



SAN JUAN 141 

permission to go ashore there once we had arrived. 
I assumed that once the New York port authorities 
had satisfied themselves that I was a proper person 
to leave the United States ■ — having given one 
look at that permit, adorned with the forbidding 
photographs of Katrina and me — the federal 
agents at San Juan would take their word for it. 
Not so. 

It was a fairly hot night under the most favorable 
conditions; but next to an airless and covered dock, 
roofed with the corrugated iron which all earth- 
quake countries so dearly love; and wedged as we 
all were in a queue of perspiring humanity down 
the narrow corridors of the ship, Tophet itself had 
no thermometer quite adequate to the demands of 
the occasion. 

A fat official clothed in white samite, or some 
such garment, stood at one end of the gangplank. 
The purser did abide at his left side, and kept the 
bridge with him. Opposite stood a Porto Rican 
assistant, of meager English speech and of still 
more limited intelligence. Between these Cerberi 
we all had to proceed. Each in turn produced his 
little card with his personal history and his picture 
on it. 

The native officer was most painstaking. He 
studied the photographs to no end, glancing from 



142 SAILING SOUTH 

time to time at the original to see if he could detect 
any resemblance. He dutifully read every word 
inscribed thereon. And having done all this, he 
naturally found that everything was all right; so 
that one by one, rather like molasses blobbing out 
of a narrow hole, our ship's company dribbled drop 
after drop into the aromatic vastness of the wharf 
below. 

There was no medical inspection whatever, and 
there was no searching of our luggage. Either pro- 
ceeding would have been far more defensible than 
this absurd scrutiny of our near-passports. Our 
mere presence on the boat was guaranty that we 
had been passed by New York and were reputable 
enough. But we might have contracted cholera or 
typhus on the trip, and our trunks might have been 
filled with whiskey, for all these San Juan author- 
ities knew — and they let us in on trust, so far as 
concerned our health or our intent to fracture the 
strictly prohibitory laws of Porto Rico. Commend 
me to bureaucracy for solid ivoriness of dome, as the 
vivid vernacular hath it. 

There are a few books extant on Porto Rico. The 
most capable one I have seen, written by one Ver- 
rall, states that after landing in San Juan and upon 
experiencing the usual mingled joys of debarkation, 
the hasty tourist is apt to conclude that it is one of 



SAN JUAN 143 

the most expensive places in the world. I concur — 
for, indeed, the author nowhere says a truer word. 
There is no avoiding the fact that on your first 
arrival you are fair game for the native of any 
country, and you are peculiarly at his mercy in 
San Juan. Who is going to tell you that the Palace 
Hotel, which lately you saw sticking up out of the 
houses as you came in, is only about three minutes* 
walk from the landing? You are hot, tired, anxious 
for your bed or your dinner. There is a lot of lug- 
gage to go up with you. There are numerous 
motors congregated outside, all honking their horns 
in the hot dusk and all officered by vociferous 
touts, who all want you to ride. Who is going to 
be such a kill- joy as to inform you that the local 
tariff for all motor cars is $1.50 the ride, whether 
you go two blocks or twenty? So you clamber into 
the car — and inside of the tiny period traditionally 
required for shaking the caudal appendage of a 
youthful sheep you are landed at the hotel door. 
The unblushing driver demands three dollars! He 
will eventually take $1.50 — and even then he will 
be a thief and a robber! 

Somewhat later the polite and solid ebony negro 
to whom you turned over your trunks on the pier 
comes along with his load — and his minimum re- 
quirement is I5.50. Mr. Verrall is entirely within the 



144 SAILING SOUTH 

limits of verity, so far as concerned one*s erroneous 
first impressions. 

I may add, however, that when the festive Porto 
Rican has done this unseemly thing to you on your 
first arrival, he has done his very worst and lets up 
on you. He has to, of course, because by this time 
you are more wise. You discover in a very brief 
tour of the town that it can be perambulated about 
from end to end in fifteen minutes of leisurely stroll ; 
and the seductive tongue of the taxi-driver, or 
taxidermist, or whatever you call him, thereafter 
wags to you in vain. San Juan is n't really an ex- 
pensive place at all. It only seems so for about 
thirty minutes on your first appearance. Next day 
it develops that it is a very clean, very hospitable, 
very diminutive, and altogether reasonable town. 
A thoroughly competent hotel offers you hospitality 
with bath, bed and board for some such trifle as, 
say, six or seven dollars a day, todos comprendidos. 
An itinerant vendor is willing to sell you a flexible 
straw hat for a very reasonable price. And a ready- 
made suit of Palm Beach cloth can be got for very 
little money, which will not pull apart until after 
at least one trip to the tubs. No sane tourist would 
complain of that. 

San Juan, the capital city of Porto Rico, occupies 
an ideal situation on the northerly side of the island 



SAN JUAN 145 

and well toward the eastern end of that side. It is a 
city built on a tiny island of its own, which makes a 
natural breakwater enclosing a broad and capacious, 
if rather shallow, bay. Indeed, there is a striking 
similarity between the bay and that at Havana. 
Ships of considerable tonnage may enter through 
the narrow channel between the Morro fort and the 
little island hard by — which latter is fondly be- 
lieved to harbor an asylum for lepers — and will 
find themselves in a perfectly protected basin, se- 
cure from every stormy wind that blows. When we 
arrived there was a big, gray liner moored in the 
midst of the harbor — obviously a former German. 
She turned out to be the old Bliicher, once a favorite 
Hamburg-American ship, but now the property of 
Brazil and prettily renamed Leopoldina. She had 
got thus far on her way from Rio to New York, and 
she was in no hurry to proceed. The officers liked 
San Juan, and lingered. It was warm, and the food 
was good, and the dancing was excellent o' nights. 
Of other shipping there was little, save for bits of 
fishing boats with lateen sails and a little swarm of 
coastwise schooners. But from day to day small 
steam craft came and went, and the harbor was 
never a dull spot to watch. A tiny ferry plied back 
and forth between the city and a diminutive settle- 
ment, Catafio, on the opposite side of the harbor. 



146 SAILING SOUTH 

And far away, across this pleasant inland sea, there 
rolled the rugged summits of the mountains — 
none of them very high, but all abrupt — which 
form the backbone of the island and divide its 
northern from its southern side. In the foreground, 
closer to the bay, we saw an infinitude of little con- 
ical hills, strongly suggestive of chicken timbales. 

San Juan itself occupies a gradual slope, ascend- 
ing from the inland harbor till it reaches the edge 
of the outer cliffs, at which point the land drops 
abruptly into the Atlantic. I should say that the 
island on which the city is built must be about two 
miles long and about half a mile wide, extending 
east and west. On its outer side and well around 
toward the harbor the city is provided with a pro- 
digious wall, erected by the early Spaniards and 
dutifully provided at every angle with projecting 
sentry-boxes of stone. If there was ever a similar 
wall on the harbor front, or on the end of the island 
whence the highway leads into the country, it has 
disappeared. But on the seaward side the fortifica- 
tions are in splendid condition still; and the old 
fortresses of the Morro, San Cristobal, and so on, 
were, at the time of our visit, in the hands of troops 
— American soldiers, chiefly, whose one regret, in 
addition to their sorrow at being sent there instead 
of to France, was that they could n't get home. 




ANCIENT SEA WALL, SAN JUAN 



SAN JUAN 147 

One soon discovers that these soldiers are friendly, 
and are most anxious to have speech with people 
from the States. The very first night, as we were 
prowling around the town in a vain search for pina 
fria — a cooling drink made of fresh pineapple and 
well known in Havana — two sergeants and a 
corporal volunteered to help and aired their Spanish 
with much gusto, but with deplorably little effect. 

Which brings me to the point that unless you re- 
member some of your Spanish, you may at times 
find it difficult to make your wants known in the 
island, despite the fact that the American occupa- 
tion dates back more than a score of years. I cannot 
conceive how it happens, but in this prolonged 
period our country has done precious little to 
Americanize the island beyond making the place 
sanitary and compelling the shops to close on Sun- 
days. We have organized a very admirable native 
police ' — splendid-looking men, whose chief func- 
tion in life is to regulate traffic in the narrow streets. 
We have made the island a most healthy spot. We 
have built excellent roads into every corner of it. 
We have planted schoolhouses in every hollow and 
on every hillock. But we have made as little im- 
pression as you can imagine on the language, which 
remains Spanish to a very marked degree. Even 
the Palace Hotel spoke a most meager and limited 



148 SAILING SOUTH 

brand of English; and I, who had possessed some 
smattering of Spanish years ago, found that while 
it came back very hard it was extremely useful. It 
was never very good Spanish, and in its best estate 
it was devoid of any verbs beyond the present tense. 
But such as it was it managed to smooth away 
many a rough place in the course of the week or 
two. A Porto Rican here and there will claim to 
speak English — but in most cases he does n't 
really, and often only pretends to understand be- 
cause that is agreeable to you. Moral: Study Span- 
ish before you take the trip. You'll have an easier 
time. 

My first discovery was that a very eligible shop- 
ping street bore the name of Calle Allen — in short 
was named for my distinguished neighbor, first 
governor of Porto Rico back in 1900, who is still 
held in affectionate memory by inhabitants of 
middle age. It was but a step from the hotel to the 
governor's official palace ; and although the present 
governor was away, it was possible to visit the of- 
ficial residence and its deep, luxuriant, and tropical 
garden just above the sea-wall. If I could secure 
the removal from its state apartments of certain 
paintings, — done by whom I suspect to be gifted 
local sign-painters and libeling shamefully certain 
of our presidents and generals, — I think I should 



SAN JUAN 149 

much enjoy living in the governor's palace at San 
Juan. Governor Allen's portrait is hung there too — 
but I should want to leave that. It was my pass- 
port and my introduction; for as we stood before 
it murmuring things about amigo viejo, behold the 
attendant brightened. Did we really know Gov- 
ernor Allen? Yes? Well, perhaps we might like to 
see the rest of the house! So we invaded intimate 
precincts not often shown, and thereafter com- 
manded the friendly salutations of the officers on 
guard whenever we went by — which was daily. 

Apart from the slight inconvenience imposed 
upon an American visitor by not being able to talk 
the lingo, it is a positive blessing that San Juan re- 
mains so foreign. It is delightfully so. The houses 
are painted in pale washes of greens, reds, pinks, 
yellows — and the deep doorways are forever giv- 
ing you glimpse of fascinating patios, or courts, well 
within, where blossoms many an incense-bearing 
tree. Family groups congregate under the grateful 
shadow of the lofty walls ' — including a host of 
little brown babies, as naked as the moment they 
were born, gamboling unashamed. Their mothers 
object to having them photographed, though, in 
that condition — discovering a sudden modesty, or 
maybe a fear of the evil eye. 

The Spanish predilection for sacred names blooms 



150 SAILING SOUTH 

forth in the nomenclature of the people and of the 
highways. Just above our hotel there was a long 
street ending in a sort of arched chapel — a votive 
offering to the Virgin, because once she appeared 
there and with upraised hand halted a runaway 
horse which was about to plunge with his driver 
into the sea beneath. That street is the Calle Santo 
Cristo — the street of the Holy Christ. On the other 
side of the hotel was the Street of the Holy Cross — 
and any amount of saintly streets will be found to 
criss-cross the town as you go about. But the 
ghostly have not all their own way. If a street is 
not named for some member of the Holy Family, 
or for some of the glorious company of the Apostles, 
it is almost sure to be named for some local mag- 
nate, like Salvadore Brau, or Baldorioty Somebody. 
And one street in especial bothered us by being 
named Tetuan Street — although what the con- 
nection might be between Porto Rico and this 
North-African name we never found out. 

On Sunday the shops may not sell merchandise. 
Even the apothecary refuses to sell you a kodak 
film. But the opera runs two performances, full 
blast, on that day, and the hotel has a jazz dance 
at dinner-time, followed by a roof-garden ball that 
lasts until early Monday. Consistency is the usual 
jewel, even under tropic skies. 



SAN JUAN 151 

Liquor is not sold, and so far as I can discover 
prohibition in Porto Rico actually does prohibit. 
Porto Rico voted this measure a year or two in 
advance of the States and is admittedly a little 
stunned by the situation now that she is waking up 
to it. The next ship after ours brought down fifteen 
cases of ostensible canned salmon, which were dis- 
covered by the police in the nick of time to be 
Martell brandy. A kind of pulque, or aguardiente^ 
or something of the sort, is said to be capable of 
being made at home out of boiled sugar-cane juice; 
but I saw no intoxicated person on the island 
during my own brief stay — which is a good thing, 
for they say the Porto Rican of the lowlier sort 
never carried his liquor well ; and as he was usually 
armed with his machete in the country districts, his 
lapses from sobriety often took on a murderous 
cast. When sober he is a rather friendly soul, 
swarthy, indolent when in funds, and much given 
to oratory rather than to music. 

There are several shades of color in San Juan 
among the resident population. There are a few 
Americans — not so many as you would think. 
There are proud Spanish families of ancient lineage. 
There are obvious hybrids, apparently a mixture 
of Spanish and Indian. And there are also negroes. 
On Sunday night, which happened in our case to be 



152 SAILING SOUTH 

in the Carnival season, the populace disported itself 
in the main plaza, marching about while the band 
played. No negroes were allowed to promenade — 
and whenever the police perceived a dusky person 
with kinky hair in the procession, he, or she, was 
gently but firnily removed and put on the side- 
lines. It appeared that kinky hair was the test. No 
less dusky parties whose hair was straight seemed 
to pass muster all right. Meantime one could hire 
chairs for ten cents and watch the show — and the 
show involved the showering of confetti and the 
douching of bystanders with perfumery, squirted 
from tiny siphons. Of this custom, I later discov- 
ered, the local press was disposed to make a griev- 
ance, on the ground that it was a nuisance which had 
now and then its dangerous features. Certainly it 
made a most prodigious reek of scent, which was 
cloying — and besides it got into your eyes and 
down your neck. You were supposed to laugh and 
say nothing. I believe this practice has been done 
away since. 

Newspapers in San Juan are plentiful ■ — all sell- 
ing for three cents and all apparently eagerly read. 
The Mogul and I, being editors and denominat- 
ing ourselves the Veteran Journalists' Association, 
bought them all religiously. They come out at 
varied hours. El Mundo is procurable at breakfast. 



SAN JUAN 153 

El Tiempo (with an English section) comes out 
accommodatingly during the forenoon. Correspond- 
encia and Democracia appear still later. The tourist 
finds his name dutifully reported, but often spelled 
wrong, and experiences a thrill. 

One who visits both Havana and San Juan will 
find a certain similarity in the two, apart from the 
situation of each on the borders of a landlocked 
harbor. They have much in common as a Spanish 
heritage, although the Cuban city is by far the 
larger of the two. They are of nearly equal age and 
the latitude of each is so nearly the same as to pro- 
duce a similar development in each case. Havana 
is the more gay, perhaps, as the larger town is 
likely to be. San Juan is the more sedate. But the 
two may be bracketed as having a certain character- 
istic in common which suffices to differentiate them 
from the other considerable centers of population 
in islands of the same general group — to wit, their 
age and evident permanence. 

Both Havana and San Juan lie far enough out- 
side the earthquake belt to have adopted the endur- 
ing material, stone, which more southerly localities 
have found it imprudent to use. In them one finds 
the high walls, the deep and shaded streets, so 
pleasant in a climate which is often torrid and never 
cold. There is a mellowness about the ancient 



154 SAILING SOUTH 

buildings, mossed and mildewed by centuries of 
sun and rain, which one misses in the more flimsy 
and wide-open streets of cities subject to earth 
shocks and occasional, if not frequent, destruction. 
Fortunate, indeed, is the tropic city which may 
safely emulate the Moors of old by lining its thor- 
oughfares with tall houses, closely set, so that the 
glaring sun makes but fleeting visits to the depths 
below. 



CHAPTER XI 

AN ISLAND CAPITAL 

IT may serve to give an idea of the climate of 
San Juan, Porto Rico, to mention the fact that 
the Palace Hotel (antes Inglaterra) has no windows. 

It has apertures in the walls, of course — loads of 
them; but there are no panes therein, chiefly be- 
cause they are n't necessary. In Porto Rico it is 
always midsummer. I recall no glass windows in 
the hostelry, save such as fill the occasional internal 
openings designed to give light to, but not a view 
of, your bathroom. The outward windows have 
shutters, only — to keep out the sun. The air is not 
only not a thing to be kept out; it is to be invited 
and encouraged to come in. 

Out of the unshuttered window you look across a 
sea of flat roofs, upon the tiles of which the domestic 
life of the city is largely led. In the freshness of 
morning, or in the cool of a tropic evening, you will 
see the inhabitants disporting themselves there in 
joyous "dishybill," with their children and pets. 
They occasionally take note of you in return. I dis- 
covered somewhat to my discomfiture — although 
I got used to it in time — that while I was taking a 



156 SAILING SOUTH 

pleasant morning shower-bath in front of a tall open 
window I was plainly visible to an opulent colored 
mammy, who signified her good-humor by waving 
her hand. There was nothing to do but wave back. 
She and her parrot, which latter hung in a sort of 
aerial vestibule on the adjacent roof, became at 
long range my familiar friends. 
I The average prevailing temperature of San Juan 
is probably described in the weather reports as 
"mean" — after the uncomplimentary way of offi- 
cial documents of the sort. This does it injustice. 
I have n't an idea what the average midday ther- 
mometric reading is, but should guess that it would 
be around 86° in the shade — a decent summer- 
time temperature, usually well tempered by a brisk 
easterly wind from the sea, a trade wind of very 
dependable character, upon which the island relies 
for its escape from a too torrid existence. Most of 
the year it blows with regularity — and curiously 
enough the most uncomfortable periods are not 
found in the depth of summer, but rather are said to 
occur in the spring and the fall of the year. 

By staying out of the sun you may easily escape 
the heat that smiteth at noonday, and if you are on 
the breezy side of the house you will be comfortable 
enough. As in most hot climates, all the world does 
this; and life undergoes a suspension of normal ac- 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 157 

tivities from lunch-time until along toward four in 
the afternoon. Then it picks up, goes back to the 
job, and continues thereon for a goodly part of the 
night. There is no denying that San Juan is rea- 
sonably noisy throughout the evening. The streets 
are very narrow, necessitating an abundant awaken- 
ing of the echoes by the warning horns of the motor 
cars. The trolley cars — there are several lines — 
proceed at a deliberate pace, but with much clang- 
ing of the bell and much squealing on the curves. 
For early slumber it is desirable to have what the 
psychologists call a "high noise- threshold " to your 
sensorium ; and the wise will also court a room on the 
windward side of the hotel, even though this may 
afford the less inspiring views. For bedclothing a 
sheet and a mosquito-bar are all-sufficient, save in 
wholly unusual and abnormal conditions. 

My own windows, not being on the cool side, gave 
compensation in that they not only afforded me a 
familiarity with the voluminous negress above re- 
ferred to, but also gave a comprehensive view of 
the inner bay, the distant mountains, and the tiny 
nearer hills, which I have come to call the "chicken 
croquettes." 

Not only is the Palace Hotel devoid of windows. 
It does away also with a goodly share of roof. It is 
built around a circular patio which is open to the 



158 SAILING SOUTH 

sky, much like the ancient impluvium of the Romans. 
If it rains — and it rains rather frequently in San 
Juan, as well as at times very hard ■ — a share of the 
moisture comes down into the office and makes glad 
the goldfish in the central fountain. Generally this 
inundation does no harm, beyond making people 
pull their chairs back under the covered parts of the 
assembly place ; but in a really torrential downpour 
I understand the flood encroaches upon the adjacent 
dining-room. However, the room is all clean white 
tiles and the rain never lasts long. 

It became our custom to stand on the topmost 
balcony of the hotel, looking down upon the central 
court, and to cast pennies thence into the fountain 
— on the theory that if you did this you would some 
day return, just as they say you will do if you throw 
soldi into the fountain of Trevi at Rome. None of 
us ever succeeded in landing a coin in the fountain. 
This procedure is not so extravagant as it sounds, 
because apart from the occasional purchase of a 
newspaper you have very little use for our ignoble 
copper coinage in San Juan. 

Naturally, since Porto Rico is a part of the United 
States, it uses American money and American post- 
age stamps. Unless things have changed there is 
urgent need, however, for some nice, clean, new 
money in the island. Under the watchful eye of the 





1 MlilWiaMiW^^ 




J^JJ^Mj^LI I 




^^^^^^^^^^^■^ii^^^^ ^^^^H 



SIDE-HILL STREET, SAN JUAN 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 159 

American Government, people leaving New York 
for Porto Rico have been made to exhibit all their 
cash ; and if it is in the form of notes calling for gold 
or silver on demand, all such bills are taken away 
from one, and less impressive notes substituted for 
them. Actual gold, of course, is also impounded. 

But the general result upon the money in circu- 
lation in Porto Rico has been to produce the dirtiest, 
shaggiest, flimsiest set of bank notes you ever saw. 
Porto Rico apologizes for these, but hands them 
over to you perforce as the best she can find. It 
cannot go on forever. Sooner or later the Govern- 
ment will have to make a clean-up, gather in the old 
bills, and start some brand-new ones in circulation 
there. 

Looking back on it now, I do not recall that I 
saw a single pleasure vehicle in San Juan drawn by 
a horse. The motor is everywhere, and the least 
plethoric inhabitants seem to get hold of cars of 
surprisingly good make. Meanwhile gasoline is ex- 
traordinarily expensive — I forget what it costs, but 
something approaching fifty cents a gallon in 1919, 
and possibly more since. This is reflected in the 
rates of motor hire, but it does n't seem to militate 
against the universal use of automobiles. I saw a 
horse or two drawing a garbage wagon — but no 
others. Net result, surprisingly clean streets and 



i6o SAILING SOUTH 

surprisingly few flies. There are some mosquitoes — 
but nothing like the number you find in Ponce, over 
on the other side of the island. Some of our party 
reported seeing cockroaches of truly heroic size 
promenading the public streets in pairs, but I missed 
these. Lizards — trim, brisk, friendly little fellows 
— you expect to see frisking over sunny walls. I 
think I heard mention of an occasional flea — al- 
though much less often than in Sicily or in Scin 
Francisco. 

Goats and kids are everywhere, and I suppose 
there are also cows, although I do not recall seeing 
any. One passing through the country sees hosts of 
steers and bullocks, but the mooly-cow is probably 
kept in a sort of secluded harem somewhere. Even in 
the best hotels the milk leaves something to be 
desired, and cream apparently does n't exist. The 
population buys its milk at retail from certain spec- 
ified milk stations scattered about the city — and 
a familiar sight is a long queue of people, chiefly 
women and children, waiting to procure the day's 
supply. It comes in huge cans borne in a boy-drawn 
barrow — and the barrow generally arrives at top- 
speed accompanied by joyous shouts. The first time 
I heard the milk wagon coming I thought it was the 
fire engines. 

San Juan does n't go In for flowers, so far as I can 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL i6i 

discern. There is a splendid garden outside the 
governor's official palace, and there may be some 
meager attempts at horticulture in some of those 
secluded patios, which you get glimpses of as you 
walk around the city. There is a splendid grassy and 
woodsy terrace overlooking the sea just beneath 
the ancient Casa Blanca — an old mansion said to 
have been built by Ponce de Le6n. But if you really 
want gardens and greenery you have to go out of the 
congested city and over to the alluring suburbs of 
Condado and Santurce, where the aristocratic peo- 
ple live in low-roofed bungalows deep in a tangle of 
bamboo, palms, eucalyptus, and poincianas. I can- 
not imagine anything much pleasanter than Con- 
dado, with its tropical vegetation luxuriating all 
around, while the blue sea pounds incessantly on a 
vast white beach just behind your house. New 
Yorkers are erecting a prodigious and splendid hotel 
out there — about fifteen minutes from San Juan 
by tram — which has since been opened. The 
grounds about it seemed rather bare at present, but 
a good-sized tree will grow up into being in about 
four years in that glorious climate — and the possi- 
bilities are superb. Besides, there's the beach close 
behind, where the long Atlantic rollers are forever 
roaring in, and where the bathing is vouched for as 
both delightful and free from sharks. I made bold 



i62 SAILING SOUTH 

one day to test the water with a gingerly foot — and 
found it tepid, as advertised. 

Speaking of hotels, one looks for really good ones 
in but few spots in the island. Those in San Juan 
and its environs are the best of all and seem to 
understand what the tourist regards as comfort. 
Once you get outside you find things more primitive. 
There is a very decent if ancient resort at Coamo 
Springs, of which more hereafter; and there are one 
or two very tolerable houses in Ponce, which is a 
city even larger than San Juan, with much better 
shops, but less clean and on the whole rather stupid, 
save as the convenient center from which to make 
motor trips. 

Outside of San Juan, even to-day, you will sel- 
dom find such a thing as a mattress. The dictum is 
that folded quilts are cooler and therefore more 
desirable — so the hotel-keeper stocks up with these, 
folds them two or three times, lays them on a woven- 
wire spring, and invites you to lie down and rest. 
This Is a mistake, and the first night you will say it is 
a fatal mistake. The second night you sleep like a 
baby — partly because you are so worn out. But if 
tourist travel Is to be seriously encouraged, some- 
thing ought to be done for the hotels of the island, 
and something also for the steamer service. Good, 
old-time ships that are safe but slow — such as they 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 163 

have now — will do very well for seasoned travelers; 
but their capacity is small and the Porto Rico trip 
ought to be a more popular one if only the voyage 
could be made in three or four days in a swift 
modern liner. 

With the lapse of days one forms the habit of 
going out at evening toward the entrance of the bay, 
where the Morro Castle is, there to sit on the ram- 
parts and watch the sunset. Distances in this tiny 
city are never great, and once you are outside the 
main town there is a long, grassy field that is swept 
by the grateful sea wind. You walk across this, 
pausing now and then to pick tiny but very prickly 
burrs out of your stockings. Out on the point you 
come to the old fort. You can go in — there 's no 
great bother about that, although they still go 
through that ancient nonsense about taking away 
your camera. Not even a war can teach us that 
tourist kodaks are almost as harmless in old forts as 
the lizards are. You might take a snapshot of a 
fifteenth- century bastion and give away some vital 
secret to the Huns! How? Well, ask the soldier on 
guard. Maybe he knows! I can't imagine anything 
of less interest to Hindenburg or Ludendorff than a 
kodak picture of the Morro — but at any rate they '11 
never see one. 

You are free to go anywhere in the castle after 



i64 SAILING SOUTH 

you have given up your camera. It is a well- 
preserved old castle. Tradition says that Admiral 
Sampson bombarded this fortress back in 1898; but 
if he did, he either did n't succeed in hitting it, or 
else the "gaping rents" spoken of in Mr. Verrall's 
veracious book before referred to, have been taste- 
fully repaired. I saw nothing that looked like evi- 
dence of a direct hit either at the Morro or an5r;vhere 
else in town. Maybe Sampson fired blank charges. 
At all events, he made the island surrender, in con- 
junction with some troops that landed over on the 
south side and marched a little way up the old 
military road. Porto Rico, in the words of Mr. 
Dooley, capitulated and was welcomed "into our 
glory ous and well-fed republic," where it has re- 
mained ever since. It is beginning to think it would 
like to get out — but I suspect that is rather fashion- 
able talk than real desire. I can't imagine why Porto 
Rico should want to get out. The island pays no 
taxes to Uncle Sam. It has its own local government 
— supervised by an imported American governor, to 
be sure, and by a handful of other assistants, but 
not in any oppressive way. It has nothing to worry 
about — and after so many centuries of worrying 
and fighting to keep out of other people's hands, I 
should think the present situation would be a relief. 
At least America is n't Old Spain. 




THE MASSIVE FORTIFICATIONS, SAN JUAN 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 165 

So the old Morro is still there, and like the other 
forts in the cincture of ancient walls it is still garri- 
soned. There are some modern cannon perched along 
the ramparts, but they are carefully shrouded. 
The soldiers when we were there confessed that they 
were bored with the life, for most of them had been 
there a year, or a year and a half. Their num- 
bers were small, but you could not complain that 
they were under-officered. They themselves agreed 
that a general, a colonel, and — until recently — a 
major, not to mention a captain and numerous 
smaller fry was ample allowance for something less 
than a full company of men. 

One forms the habit of visiting the forts, partly 
because they are interesting and partly because 
the American soldiers there are so affable and so 
uncommonly glad to see you. Besides, they are 
such splendid fellows themselves — alert, well-set- 
up, apparently finding the climate suitable, although, 
of course, they are prone to curse the fate that puts 
them there and does n't let them home. 

After all. Uncle Sam has done a creditable work 
in Porto Rico, not changing too many things, not 
meddling too much, but keeping the place in line. 
I never saw a handsomer or more appropriate public 
building than the federal custom house and post- 
office down by the Marina — a three-story stone 



i66 SAILING SOUTH 

structure with a roof of red tile, quite in the Spanish 
manner and a delight to see. The new buildings of 
the city are nearly all handsome — but this is the 
finest. The local schoolhouses would do credit to 
the finest capital city in the States. 

Taking it by and large I was greatly pleased with 
San Juan and I want to go back. I enjoyed the city, 
the people, the climate, the general spirit of things. 
I even enjoyed a performance of "La Boheme" by 
a touring company that left something to be de- 
sired, even though the night was toasting hot, the 
orchestra abominable, and the scenery improvised. 
For you could go out between the acts and stroll in 
the public squares under a wondrous moon — and 
shops purveying refrescos of a strictly temperate 
but cooling kind were close at hand. 

Turning from the city to a contemplation of its 
environment, you will discover that the island of 
Porto Rico, which is less than one hundred miles 
long and not far from forty miles wide, is almost 
exactly oblong in shape. It lies at the elbow of 
the Antilles, at the end of the more considerable 
islands headed by Cuba and just at the beginning of 
that series of lesser Antilles which string off toward 
the South American coast. It is a matter of five 
days' steaming from New York and it is only 
eighteen degrees of latitude north of the Equator. 




«J« 



i68 SAILING SOUTH 

It has practically but a single great harbor — 
that of San Juan. There are, it is true, several other 
ports of more or less importance at other points 
around the island at which vessels of large size call 
regularly, such as Ponce on the south side and 
Mayaguez on the west; but at these points the ships 
are forced to lie in open roadsteads. However, the 
winds of this latitude being reasonably constant and 
blowing chiefly from the north and east, the road- 
steads do fairly well for all ordinary purposes. 

Columbus discovered Porto Rico, along with 
other and less notable islands, on (I believe) his 
second voyage — ■ although the casual tourist is 
likely not to be exact about such matters and is 
usually sure of little save that at least it was not on 
the explorer's first essay. He happened upon the 
place by accident, naturally, and coasted along the 
northern shore until he found a spot where there was 
visible an inviting cascade. It was a providential 
chance to replenish the water-casks, so he landed 
and filled his scuttlebutts with liquid acceptable to 
the most exacting prohibitionist. There is an active 
dispute to this day as to which of two possible 
sites should rightfully claim this honor, both hav- 
ing cascades and local names that have to do with 
watering-up. One is Aguadilla, the other Aguadas. 
Those whose zeal for leaving nothing unseen is 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 169 

unquenchable will do well to play it safe and visit 
both. 

Columbus, finding the misguided natives calling 
their country by the heathen name of Borrinqu6n, 
promptly and piously rechristened it San Juan 
Bautista — Saint John the Baptist. This name is 
perpetuated only in the capital city which became a 
port of importance during the governorship of Juan 
Ponce de Le6n — the same who later sought in 
Florida the fountain of perpetual youth, as no doubt 
you well remember. Curiously enough it was the 
city which was originally named Puerto Rico — the 
Rich Port — but subsequent centuries have re- 
versed the early nomenclature. The island itself 
worried along, first as Borrinqu^n and then as 
Caparra, until Puerto Rico became its accepted 
name. After the American conquest in 1898 a brave 
attempt was made to force a universal acceptance of 
the Spanish spelling — but no one would do it and 
the island is officially Porto Rico now. 

Poor old Ponce de Leon bequeathed his name to 
the second city of the island. As a matter of fact, it 
ought really to be the first city, because it has the 
largest population and the widest territorial extent 
— but it is not the capital and therefore has to be 
content with second honors. Doubtless you were 
taught by your early preceptresses to speak of 



170 SAILING SOUTH 

"Pontha" de Leon, but if you inquired of a native 
the road to Pontha he would n't know what you 
meant. They call it Poncy, and leave it to the 
Castilians of Old Spain to lithp thuch nameth ath 
thith. Call it Poncy and you'll be strictly ortho- 
dox. 

Porto Rico is of volcanic origin and still has an 
occasional earthquake to remind it of its ancestry. 
They had a perfectly awful one in 1918, which shook 
the whole west end of the island, knocked off prac- 
tically the whole second story of Mayaguez, left 
prints of devastation in Ponce, and bothered San 
Juan only a little. Several hundred people were 
killed. But this was the first bad quake in many a 
long year, and for all practical purposes you may 
treat the island as a safe place. Your chances of 
being struck by lightning at home are about the 
same as those of being killed by an earthquake there, 
or greater. Apart from the tr emblements of the earth, 
as the French say, and an occasional hurricane, the 
island has no drawbacks at all. I am told there are 
no poisonous reptiles, or spiders, and no dangerous 
beasts — save the native chauffeurs. 

Through the middle of the island, running east 
and west like a huge spine, is a mountain range. 
The loftiest peak. El Yunque — which may mean 
either the Anvil or the Giant — is a little short of 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 171 

four thousand feet in height. But the general eleva- 
tion of this bisecting ridge is not far from three 
thousand feet anywhere, and it is hard to find any 
place where roads may pass that is any lower, save 
close to the coasts. The land along the shore is low 
and fertile, giving a chance to raise large quantities 
of tobacco, sugar cane, coffee, pineapples, bananas, 
oranges, grapefruit, and other tropical crops. A 
railroad, built by the Americans, runs from San Juan 
westward along the northern shore, around the west 
end and down the south side to Ponce. Light rail- 
roads extend somewhat beyond these points to out- 
lying districts, but never far from the water. The 
greater part of the interior is made up of abrupt 
hills and mountains with deep vales between — all 
rather intensively cultivated. In the higher lands 
the crops appear to be chiefly tobacco, coffee, and 
sweet potatoes, with bananas for variety. 

Just at present shipping conditions are not of the 
best, owing to the war. Wherefore perfectly delicious 
oranges and grapefruit can be had by the carload for 
little more than a song, and despairing planters 
affirm that if something does n't happen pretty soon 
they'll be ruined. After you have purchased a 
dozen solid-gold oranges at your corner fruitstand 
at home, just think that in Porto Rico you could 
pick up one hundred oranges for a quarter almost 



172 SAILING SOUTH 

anywhere — and the most delicious grapefruit you 
ever tasted in your life for very little more! 

In the four centuries of Spanish misrule there was 
built one amazingly beautiful highroad — the mili- 
tary road from San Juan to Ponce, which runs in 
long, sinuous curves to the top of the mountains and 
down the other side. It's a grand road still. To this 
the Americans have since added about two hundred 
miles of macadam connecting the various points both 
coastwise and inland, so that at present there is no 
more delightful land for motoring anywhere under 
the sun. I have been in numerous spots on earth 
which advertised alluringly to be "the paradise of 
motorists," but none that did it more justifiably 
than Porto Rico. Save where the light railways that 
serve as supplemental feeders penetrate, all traffic 
with the interior proceeds by motor trucks. The 
roads are constantly overseen by sections, and prison 
labor helps to keep them in repair. 

Down in the flat lands near the sea, set in the 
midst of acres upon acres of sugar cane, are the 
centrales as they are called — the various great sugar 
mills, of which more hereafter. There is a law which 
prevents these mills from owning (directly) more 
than a meager amount of cane plantation; but by 
some intricate device they manage usually to have a 
controlling voice over many thousands of acres in 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 173 

their vicinity. They are so isolated, and they use 
so much of their own refuse for fuel that they are 
very far from being blots on a landscape where every 
prospect pleases and where man is only very moder- 
ately vile. 

Nearly every writer on Porto Rico mentions the 
fact that the primeval vegetation of the mountains 
has been largely cut down, leaving denuded hill- 
sides. That is to a great extent true. But the trop- 
ical growth of trees is very rapid, and the task of 
reforesting the island, if it were ever seriously at- 
tempted, would be easy. As it is, though the hills 
are too bare, the roads are abundantly shaded by 
palms and by the flamboyant poincianas, by ilex, 
bamboo, banana, and numerous other trees the 
names of which I never was able to discover. 

One tree is to me very much like another — and it 
is always Katrina who is the botanist of our voyages. 
I have a hazy recollection of seeing a sea of green 
from our flying motor — a general view of pleasant 
places. It is Katrina who notes the individual fea- 
tures as we fly along and mentions them with excla- 
mations of delight. I am told to observe and to ad- 
mire amaryllis, orchids, wandering-jew, and a variety 
of beauties that I never see at all. I generally murmur, 
"Yes, yes! Are n't they gorgeous!" — that's easier 
than admitting that I have missed the spectacle alto- 



174 SAILING SOUTH 

gether. It's less humiliating. I am constantly be- 
sought to ask the native driver — whose language is 
not mine and whose attention is properly riveted to 
the road — ■ what sort of tree that is which we are 
just approaching. So I seize Antonio, or Arturo, by 
the sleeve with one hand and point to the tree with 
the other: ^'Hey, Arturo! Que classe de arbol?" 

Arturo looks at it with a lack-luster eye and 
finally announces, " Yo no se!'\ He does n't know. 
I relay this news to the tonneau — but by this time 
there's another tree to look at, or some fields of 
mariposa lilies, or some new brand of "heathen" 
fruit. Arturo is rather better on fruits than on trees 
and flowers — but his names for these gifts of God 
are usually couched in a form unfamiliar to me and 
are impossible of translation. So I utter an unin- 
telligible jumble of sounds supposed to sound like 
what he said, and receive in return the gibes of that 
ungrateful but inquiring back seat. After long 
experience I have come to know the "flamboyant" 
tree when I see it, because it is one glorious mass of 
red. Palms, any of us can tell at sight — although 
we may not be sure as to the varieties thereof. 
Bananas are never to be mistaken for fig-trees, nor 
fig-trees for bamboos. I hope the thing we have 
voted to call a mango was really a mango! 

You must n't blame me. When I motor I watch 



AN ISLAND CAPITAL 175 

the road. If it is a road which winds up and down 
mountains, skirting precipices and leaping ravines 
on narrow bridges, I watch it with the devotion of 
a mother at the bedside of her first-born. I pray 
Arturo to slow down, being well aware that there 
is such a thing as centrifugal force — a thing for 
which most Porto Rican drivers have a man's con- 
tempt — and I have no wish to be skidded into 
eternity before my time. It is true, as Mrs. Mogul 
reminds me from the tonneau, that we have n't but 
one chance to die; but I want to postpone that 
chance, seeing it is all I am allowed, and not use it 
up too soon. You can't expect me, sitting there on 
the bridge of the ship, to take a mere first-class 
passenger's interest in the beauties of opulent na- 
ture. In a rugged country like Porto Rico there is 
usually a view ahead for about fifty yards, to a 
point where the road loops around the next shoulder 
of the mountain. Very likely there 's a motor truck 
coming down — yes, by George, there is! ^^Hey, 
Arturo! Carro que vienel" The nonchalant Arturo 
swings out of one danger into another — wheels 
skimming along the ditch — said ditch being two 
hundred feet deep by actual count. The bullock- 
carts that I have missed by a hair, the horses that 
have saved themselves from being slain by making 
agile leaps into the coppice on the roadside, the 



176 SAILING SOUTH 

insouciant peasants who have all but been ushered 
untimely into Behind the Beyond because Arturo 
was entranced by the song of a bird while doing a 
modest forty per hour on the grade, must number 
thousands. However, I'm still safe and sound. I 
have lived to tell my tale. And now I intend to 
take up in more consecutive form the narrative of 
a motor jaunt through Porto Rico, which started 
personally conducted by Jesus Pefia, proceeded 
under the tutelage of Antonio and Arturo, and ended 
in the voluptuous arms of Augustino Rodriguez. 



CHAPTER XII 
MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 

I WILL at the outset say that if you like touring, 
appreciate glorious scenery most when seen from 
a splendid road, and are "sport" enough to put up 
with what, after all, are very decent and clean, 
though admittedly not first-grade, hotels, you will 
find Porto Rico eminently satisfactory. It is a 
land where there falls never any snow. Frost is un- 
known. The modest mountains, though devoid of 
Alpine glaciers and Himalayan summits, are rugged 
and imposing. And it has what every "paradise" 
should have — luxuriant greenery, lush dells and 
distant vistas of the open sea. 

Hiring a motor in San Juan de Porto Rico ought 
not to be much more difficult than buying a two- 
quart pail of blueberries in Mt. Desert in their 
season — and as a matter of fact it is n't. One has 
only to make due allowances for the vagaries of the 
Spanish temperament. The real difficulty arises 
when you try to hire two motors. 

During your peregrinations through the town on 
the first days of your arrival, the chief impression 



178 SAILING SOUTH 

you receive is that not only has every native some 
sort of a car, but also that each is anxious to rent 
the same for voyages of discovery. "Gentleman, 
you want hire car for week trip?" You cannot walk 
around the tiny plaza of San Juan without hearing 
that formula repeated about a score of times. 

The trouble with our caravan was that one car 
would n't be enough. In addition to Katrina and 
myself there was the Mogul with his spouse — and 
in addition to them, the Millers of Dee. The very 
least we could do with was two automobiles — and 
the two must have ample baggage space besides. 
Hence we had made no haste; but as we wandered 
about the city we gave the multitude of anxious 
bidders what I have heard denominated the once- 
over. The Mogul had read somewhere that you 
must be especially careful not to hire a native 
driver because the native drivers are prone both to 
speed mania and to its direct opposite — to wit, 
sleeping-sickness, or the hookworm disease. There 
is no middle ground. Either the Porto Rican 
motorist must be taking the hairpin turns of the 
mountain highways on two wheels, or else he must 
be in repose. Such was the dictum of some anxious 
adviser — and we believed it. We could have no 
native chauffeurs in ours. 

Some one also happened to have letters to a local 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 179 

banker, and the banker further disquieted us by 
the news that there were n't any but native drivers. 
He advised hiring the most careful ones he could 
discover for us — and intimated that his bank stood 
ready to assume the custody of last wills and testa- 
ments. The matter was referred to him with full 
powers. 

That evening there appeared unto us Antonio. 
His last name I have never learned. He was a lean 
and hungry individual, with a habit of extending 
both arms in an attitude betokening utter despair 
and an absolute surrender to the fell clutch of cir- 
cumstance. He was able to speak about as little 
English as I could speak of Spanish, with the result 
that there was between us a great gulf fixed — a 
sort of linguistic chasm to be spanned only by the 
language of signs. But we managed to elicit from 
him that he was lord over a five-year-old Buick; 
that he was willing to engage for a week's trip 
around the island; that he thought he could un- 
earth another car of about the same vintage for the 
rest of the party; and that he would bring the other 
man around. Later appeared the other man — 
destined to be a mere episode in our earthly pil- 
grimage, but impressive. He was moustachioed in 
the fiercest Spanish style, and one looked to hear 
from his lips such words as "Pieces of Eight!" He 



i8o SAILING SOUTH 

too conveyed the Idea that on Tuesday he would be 
found waiting at the door. 

Now I ought to have been wise, for I had seen 
several hopeful excursionists starting out on this 
same expedition and I had learned to see them wait. 
But one always expects to be different in fate from 
others; and therefore when Tuesday came with no 
waiting motors we experienced a pained surprise. 
Finally Antonio drove up only an hour behind 
time, which was doing fairly well — but he was 
in the depths of despair. His piratical friend had, 
it appeared, shamelessly accepted another job. It 
was Carnival time. Antonio doubted that there was 
another car in San Juan — that city but yesterday 
so packed with cars! 

In vain did the Mogul assume the portentous 
attitude of the late Dr. Munyon and read to An- 
tonio an unintelligible version of the riot act. 
Antonio merely thrust his hands forth in his cus- 
tomary gesture of abject helplessness. However, 
he would make search. The hotel also instigated a 
telephonic inquiry. Hopeful boys, with backsheesh 
in view, scurried busily around the neighborhood. 
As a result there finally appeared a somewhat di- 
lapidated Dodge, a hopeful but antiquated Ford, 
and a sort of hermaphrodite Hudson painted up to 
look quite new, but boasting two different styles of 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO i8i 

hub. Partisans of each applicant cheerfully libeled 
all the others as "no good." 

It was the new paint on the Hudson that won — ■ 
for a while. It seemed the only thing to do. And we 
were just making a fresh bargain with its master 
when all at once there descended, apparently 
straight from heaven, one Arturo, late a soldier of 
the A.E.F., still in uniform, and mendaciously pro- 
fessing to speak the English language. A gladsome 
chorus of curbstone admirers acclaimed him supe- 
rior to all the other rivals. Wherefore we changed 
apologetically to Arturo' — fruitfully surnamed Can- 
tellupi. The Mogul covertly assuaged the disap- 
pointed and discarded applicant with a long green 
bill. It developed that his name was Jesus Pena. 

The caravan got away at last to a reasonably 
good start. It was a lowering day, but that made it 
agreeably cool. 

\ There is only one road out of San Juan — which 
city is situated on a sort of island that amounts to a 
peninsula. It is naturally a frequented thorough- 
fare, tenanted by a constant stream of traffic of 
every style. In addition to the multitude of motors 
there are flying jitneys, trams, laboring bullock- 
carts, pedestrians innumerable. It is the beginning 
of the ancient Spanish highway to Ponce — the 
centuries-old military road. I judge that if there are 



i82 SAILING SOUTH 

speed regulations they are more honored in the 
breach than the observance. 

We swung out of the city, through the suburban 
villages of Santurce and Rio Piedras (which latter 
we may translate freely Stony Brook), and through 
a rolling country fresh and sweet from recent 
showers and green with a riotous tropical verdure. 
Dull care was banished. From the rear seat I 
trolled a merry catch. The road unrolled like a 
smooth gray ribbon, undulating over gentle hills 
and winding through fields of orange, tobacco, and 
cane. Ahead towered the rugged forms of the blue 
mountains. The Mogul, accustomed to high speeds, 
sat unmoved beside Arturo as the latter opened up 
his throttle and began to hit up a brisk forty-five 
an hour. A hasty glance behind showed me that we 
had left Antonio and our other car as if nailed to the 
post. Antony was not in sight. No one knew 
where he was — but doubtless he would catch us 
somewhere. Meantime we shot like an arrow into 
the interior of Porto Rico, which speedily revealed 
itself as a rugged isle, abundantly sown with way- 
side public schools. 

I cannot now recall how many schoolhouses 
there are in the island, but I should say I must 
have seen upwards of two hundred first and last, 
scattered over hill and dale, never very large, but 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 183 

each accommodating some tiny and often undis- 
coverable rural hamlet. Every mile or two there 
would appear on the roadside a sign, ^^Precaucion! 
Escuela Puhlica!^' — the Spanish way of telling 
motorists to look out for school-children. These 
diminutive huts usually had a decent American 
flag duly raised on an improvised staff — and 
within always a dozen or two of youngsters being 
taught something. We flashed by them, onward 
and ever upward, seeking the tobacco country of 
Caguas and Cayey. Steep and denuded hillsides 
stole upon us ere we were aware — cultivated to 
their tops as we later discovered. Great white 
patches on the remote hills betokened fields of to- 
bacco sheltered under cloth, but looking from a 
distance as if some gigantic fairy had dropped her 
handkerchief. You can see the same thing on a 
smaller scale in the Connecticut Valley ' — huge 
areas of cheesecloth, carried aloft on the top of 
bean-poles, so that a man may walk erect under 
this vast tent and cultivate the weed which cheers 
and soothes. 

Caguas and Cayey are separated by a sort of 
subsidiary mountain range, which the road sur- 
mounts by long, upward curves. It seems a con- 
siderable climb to the summit — but when you get 
there, behold you must descend again to a fresh 



i84 SAILING SOUTH 

inland valley, and climb in turn out of that one to 
a mountain height greater still. I always dislike 
that feature of mountain travel. It seems such a 
pity, after you have labored up to an altitude of 
twenty-five hundred feet, to go away, 'way down 
again and then climb another three thousand. But 
that's what you always have to do. Fortunately 
the Spaniards who had engineered this road had a 
good eye for grades and made them easy — at the 
expense of vastly increased distances. The views, of 
course, were superb. The clouds kindly held off the 
mountain-tops, and chance patches of sunlight il- 
lumined the vast green depths below. Tobacco gave 
way to coffee — until I began to think of O. Henry's 
description of "this fruitstand and grocery-store of 
a country." 

It developed that our Arturo had temperament. 
He was a graceful creature with soulful eyes — 
somewhat bleary if the truth be told — the hands 
of a gentleman, whereof he was immensely proud, 
and a lithe body which he draped over his wheel 
in attitudes suggestive of Mercury, new-'lighted on 
a heaven-kissing hill. Conversation with him soon 
revealed the fact that his boasted English was de- 
plorably limited. Longer acquaintance indicated 
that he was not inclined to soil those shapely and 
well-manicured hands by tinkering the inward 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 185 

parts of his machine. A year in the army had taught 
him much — among other things the gentle art of 
ordering other people to do the distasteful tasks. I 
noticed in the course of a few days that if we had 
tire trouble it was the perspiring Antonio who did 
the heavy work. But if it were a case of gathering 
wayside flowers, Arturo was there with the willing- 
ness to serve. His roving eye lighted with apprecia- 
tion at the manifold beauties of nature. He es- 
teemed it a privilege to swarm gracefully to the 
tops of wayside trees to gather queer fruits — the 
names of which he usually did n't know, and all 
of which proved to be unripe. He would become 
utterly oblivious of all else at the song of a bird. 
The lure of a sudden little river — one is always 
fording shallow rivers in Porto Rico — was not to 
be resisted. He must halt and wash those shapely 
hands! 

I could hear the Mogul talking learnedly to him 
from his perch on the front seat — Arturo cocking 
an attentive ear and pretending politely to under- 
stand. In the meantime Katrina and Mrs. Mogul 
exclaimed over the opulence of the verdure, noting 
flowers and shrubs as we flew by, and actually giv- 
ing them names. As for me, I hung on and formu- 
lated prayers for such as are in peril on the high- 
road. We descended to the depths of still another 



i86 SAILING SOUTH 

valley and swung up the following ascent, in and 
out the winding curves, round and about mountain 
spurs enclosing cavernous ravines, climbing, climb- 
ing, climbing — until at last we reached the ulti- 
mate crest and backbone of the island and looked 
down upon the Caribbean from the aerie prettily 
named Aibonito. 

From here the road dropped as abruptly as it 
had risen — still in graceful curves, leaping deep 
gulches on ancient stone bridges, and affording 
Arturo a holy joy which manifested itself in rim- 
ming the outside edge of unparapeted corners. 
Even Katrina's joyous comments on the wayside 
flora now became subdued and fragmentary — and 
once or twice an involuntary squeak from Mrs. 
Mogul indicated that she, too, appreciated the dire 
possibility of a lurch which might land us all un- 
timely in Charon's skiff. However, none came. We 
got safely to the foot of the grade, turned abruptly 
into a branch road, squattered at speed across a 
stony little river, and swarmed up the abrupt grade 
beyond. The first lap of our ride was over. We 
whirled with a joyous hoot into Coamo Springs — 
late, indeed, but not too late for lunch. 

One owes Coamo Springs more than a word. It is 
a resort as old as the Spanish occupation, and once 
on a time it was a sort of rural Monte Carlo. At 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 187 

present it is a sedate place where at all seasons of 
the year tourists and natives go for hot sulphur 
baths. There is no other hot spring in the island, 
despite its volcanic origin. 

There is a queer old hotel there — a one-story 
affair with a broad central corridor and wide ve- 
randas on each side. All the rooms are open at 
both ends — • one end on the veranda, the other on 
the central corridor. The door toward the veranda 
is a slat affair. The one on the corridor is a con- 
traption of two leaves, reaching neither to the bot- 
tom nor the top — such as in earlier days you may 
have seen at the entrance of New York saloons. 
The result is that one enjoys about the same pri- 
vacy as a goldfish. One is cool — but semi-public. 
The night has a thousand snores. And as every 
door, after it grows dark, looks exactly like every 
other door, it is wise to be careful about enter- 
ing what you imagine to be your own room, lest 
you emulate Mr. Pickwick at Ipswich. I grew ac- 
customed to hearing cautious gentlemen sounding 
their way along, bleating "Emma, Emma!" in a 
sort of inquiring voice, until identity had been es- 
tablished. 

Down and ever downward from the hotel a cov- 
ered way leads to the bathing place — a glorious 
spot where deep cells are provided, opening off a 



i88 SAILING SOUTH 

dim central hall embowered in trees. In each cell is 
a Roman bath — a sunken pool, into which a neat- 
handed attendant draws copious supplies of water 
for your ablutions. She is polite enough to ask 
whether you prefer hot or cold — but invariably 
turns on the spout you don't ask for. The fact is, 
that the cold water is only a few degrees less hot 
than the other. And when she has withdrawn, you 
bolt your door, descend into a capacious tank, and 
luxuriate in such comfort as you probably never 
knew before. For such as like it, there are dual 
tanks so that two may bathe at once. And for such 
as can endure it there is sulphur water to drink. It 
must be regarded as good for one ■ — otherwise no 
one would ever do it. It has that taste of warm 
flatirons mentioned by Mr. Weller. 

In the evening you sit on the lawn out under a 
sky in which the stars blaze with an unwonted 
splendor. The hills which shut in the vale of Coamo 
rise half guessed in the night — until chance fires 
in the withered refuse of the cane-fields suddenly 
bring them out in startling distinctness. Those 
familiar with the spangled heavens point out new 
and unfamiliar southern constellations. The wind 
is asleep. You would say it was August, though in 
fact it is early March. You smoke the native cigar — 
which is cheap but good. 



MOTORING IN PORTO RICO 189 

Thus we sat, and one by one sleepy neighbors 
withdrew from the starlit circle to go questing their 
rooms, with much tentative "Emma, Emma," and 
"Lucy, Lucy," in the dusky corridors of the hotel. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SUGAR 

IT was while we were still at Coamo Springs that 
I had the unexpected thrill of being "paged." 
All the world was sitting on the lawn enjoying the 
tropic night — a night so warm and so still that it 
seemed impossible it could be winter — a night re- 
plete with stars so brilliant that it hardly seemed 
they could be stars. Now and again a red glow 
would suffuse the heavens — doubtless from fires 
in the plantation refuse, but glibly described by 
a neighboring guest to a credulous lady as "the 
glare of the Antilles." It was then that I heard 
myself being "paged." 

Such an experience always gives me thrills and I 
imagine it does so to nearly every one but the most 
hardened. One feels rather set up, rather con- 
spicuous, and at the same time alarmed. In my 
own case a sort of nameless terror usually overlays 
everything else — but especially was it so to hear 
myself besought by a native bell-boy in this re- 
mote comer of the world where no one could by 
any chance know that I was. Therefore some un- 
precedented calamity must have occurred, moving 



SUGAR 191 

detective agencies to seek me out! It was some one 
on the telephone, they said. 

It turned out that there was no cause for alarm. 
A pleasant voice said that its owner was "Carter 
'87'' — his name may as well be Carter; that he 
had seen our names in the local paper as late ar- 
rivals in the district; and that he hoped we could 
come and take lunch with him on the morrow at 
the sugar central about fifteen miles away, over 
which he was lord and master. 

Now a central is the Porto Rican way of naming 
a sugar mill, and I had sorely wanted to see a sugar 
mill. I had been told by all means to do it if I got 
the chance. And here was Carter, whom I remem- 
bered well, inviting me to inspect the second largest 
one in the island — maybe in the world. I wanted 
to — but prudence warned me to inform Carter 
that, like Wordsworth's idiotic little girl, we were 
seven. I could n't very well leave the Mogul and 
the Millers of Dee. It seemed to me, over a rather 
imperfect telephone line, that Carter gasped a little 
at this news — but he said with creditable promp- 
titude that I must bring them all. The deal went 
through for one o'clock next day. We then to bed, 
as Pepys would put it, with great content. 

By dint of naming a fairly early hour, we man- 
aged to get the reposeful Antonio and the tempera- 



192 SAILING SOUTH 

mental Arturo into commission with the motors at 
nine-thirty. It became evident that each was sailing 
unfamiliar seas. Chauffeurs of San Juan, they had 
mendaciously caused it to be assumed that the en- 
tire highway system of the island was to them an 
open book. In fact I suspect neither of them had 
ever done any great amount of driving, and it was 
sure that they had never gone from Coamo to the 
southeast along the shore. There is, however, this 
merit about Porto Rico — you can't very well get 
lost. There's one main road to where you wish to 
go, and you cannot possibly lose it. The trouble all 
comes when you have to drive for five or six miles 
down a plantation track looking for the main 
arteries of travel. 

However, by dint of asking questions and follow- 
ing the most promising trails we did manage even- 
tually to arrive at the coast of the Caribbean. There 
were one or two shallow rivers to ford — but the 
motors of Porto Rico are used to that. The only 
thing you must n't do is stop in midstream, be- 
cause if you do the weight of the car sends you hub 
deep. You poise on the bank, make all snug, set 
your gears in the low speed — and plough through, 
very much like the Leviathan in a sea-way. 

A very decent white road led eastward along the 
shore. It was dusty, the rain not being a frequent 



SUGAR 193 

visitor to this side of the island. The surrounding 
country was rather flat and, for a tropical scene, 
stupid. Nothing but acres upon acres of cane — I 
forget how many hundred thousand. But there 
were "heathen" fruit-trees on the wayside to be 
exclaimed at and identified — always a laborious 
process. There were occasional funerals to be 
saluted with much doffing of the hat. I think we 
never went to ride that we did n't pass at least two 
funerals. The casket was invariably borne on the 
shoulders of a stalwart company, and sometimes 
there were a few mourners, but not always. The 
Spaniard thinks he has done his duty by the de- 
parted when prayers have been said at home. The 
mere laying away of the corpse is n't so much of a 
ceremony. One is content to put on deep mourning, 
deny one's self all social joys for a space, and hire a 
vast black-bordered space in the local newspaper 
for a memorial notice now and then. 

By the appointed time we whirled up to the 
rendezvous somewhat the worse for dust, but other- 
wise feeling first-rate. The central lay well to the 
side from the highroad, and turned out to be a very 
considerable village. It sat on a tiny eminence 
overlooking the sea; and in a broad lagoon, pro- 
tected by a long outlying reef, there lay a tramp 
steamer loading raw sugar for Boston. The most 



194 SAILING SOUTH 

prominent thing in sight was naturally the mill — 
a towering structure of corrugated iron dominated 
by a lofty stack, from the top of which a wisp 
of smoke trailed briskly away in the teeth of the 
breeze. 

A tiny railroad branched off over the fields, and 
on it little trains of cars brought in loads of cane. 
I have always wanted a railroad like that to play 
with. 

All about lay the needful buildings of the in- 
dustry which had created them — a vast store- 
house, warehouses for the finished product, homes 
for the help, schools for their children, a trim post- 
office, and on a hill o'erlooking all the neighbor- 
hood. Carter's house. I was glad I came. It looked 
very like a New England house, and the bath- 
rooms looked like New England bathrooms. Every 
window stood open to the breeze, and it was alto- 
gether like a bland June day at home. 

I need n't dwell on the lunch. Carter had appar- 
ently no difficulty in dealing with the seven — in 
fact he said that was a modest number, for occa- 
sional visitors had sometimes brought as many as 
twenty hungry people to see the sugar mill. The 
dispensation of lordly hospitality was one of his 
duties as resident manager. Meanwhile the main 
thing was to see sugar made. 



SUGAR 195 

In a general way I suppose we all know that sugar 
is crystallized somehow out of the juice of the sugar 
cane. The actual process is more of a mystery. 
Every one who has traveled much in the Far South 
has seen fields of the cane — looking rather like ex- 
aggerated corn, and apparently much esteemed by 
natives as a delicacy to chew. They say it is good 
for the teeth to get a stick of sugar cane and suck it. 
At all events, the teeth of people addicted to this 
wild dissipation always seem very white and fine. 

Carter warned us that the sugar mill would be 
found rather hot, for any corrugated iron house 
under a broiling sun is apt to be so — even without 
the addition of numerous infernal fires such as are 
required to convert the cool sap into molasses and 
eventually into raw sugar. But it was promised not 
to be unbearably warm, so we plunged into the 
dusty depths of the factory robed in the lightest 
habiliments of summer. 

It was simple enough to start with. One of the 
toy trains had just backed up to the door, and the 
cars were being unloaded one by one. A huge crane 
dropped Its jaws over a car, engulfed the entire 
contents In one capacious mouthful, swung it easily 
aloft — and dumped it In a mammoth hopper at 
the foot of an incline. The cane fell into this hopper 
every-which-way, much as old-fashioned jack-straws 



196 SAILING SOUTH 

used to dx). At the bottom, unseen but active, there 
was a deliberate treadmill moving upward, very 
like a subway escalator. The mass of twisted canes 
heaved in a disquieting way, suggestive of the deep 
in a storm — but after a while you could see that 
the mass really was being propelled slowly up to- 
ward a pair of mammoth rollers, which were eating 
up the stalks as if they enjoyed the job. 

We climbed up there and saw the presses at their 
work. The unsuspecting canes went cheerfully in 
between the great rollers and were crushed to bits. 
The sap poured out into a sluice — and the mangled 
cane went on through four other pairs of rollers, 
each in turn taking its toll. At the last that cane 
had n't any more sap left in it than the mummy of 
Thothmes the Third — and Carter fished out a bit 
of it to show me how utterly dry and dead it had 
become. This dried refuse, he said, went to feed 
the boilers, and he told me how many tons of the 
stuff went to equal a ton of coal. Of course I've 
forgotten that useful fact, now that I want to tell 
about it. I only know that they don't have to use 
much coal, and that the dried cane makes a per- 
fectly terrific heat. I know, because I went by an 
open furnace door. I seem to remember that he 
said, weight for weight, the cane yielded about 
eleven per cent in actual sugar. The rest went into 



SUGAR 197 

molasses and a heat rivaling that which was once 
turned on for the benefit of Shadrach, Meshach, 
and Abednego. Molasses, in its final apotheosis, can 
be turned into rum — but not in Porto Rico, which 
is bone-dry. 

For something like nine months out of the year 
the mill runs day and night. Then comes a lull 
during which the weary resident manager gets a 
chance to run home to the States for a bit of va- 
cation. The central itself is n't allowed to own out- 
right more than a small tract of cane plantation, 
but usually the neighborhood manages to get into 
some kind of holding concern for the use of its ad- 
jacent mill. Crops naturally grow rapidly under 
that wonderful sky and clime. Carter said that 
usually it was wise to renew the cane plants from 
time to time, but that he had seen fields where 
they claimed there had been no renewal for some- 
thing like sixty years. 

We did not actually see sugar made, after all. 
We saw the juice expressed and beheld it running 
away in a vast syrupy river through a sluice to the 
various vacuum pans and sich, that I believe figure 
effectively in the process of sugaring-off on this 
gigantic scale. But the heat of that part of the 
work was so intense as to repel us from visiting 
the tanks too intimately, and we were hurried on 



198 SAILING SOUTH 

to the next visible process which was the separating 
of the sugar itself from the syrup in which it was 
carried. That was done by centrifugal force, much 
as cream is separated from milk in any ordinary 
dairy. You could see this going on from an elevated 
gallery. An attendant opened a pipe and filled a 
vast copper cylinder, which at once began to rotate 
until it was going around at a rate represented by 
some astronomical figure in revolutions per minute. 

At the end the separator was emptied and the 
sugar was taken out, and you could go down and 
scoop up a handful. It was raw, in truth — sick- 
ishly sweet, and of course brown in color rather than 
white. I can taste my handful yet. And out be- 
yond were men busily filling gunnysacks with it, 
and other men sewing them up, and other men 
piling the bags on carriers, and others shooting 
them into little cars, and others shoving the cars 
down to the pier — whence lighters took them to 
the steamer in the broad lagoon. The wind out on 
the pier was grateful after the inferno of the sugar 
mill. 

We went into the supply shed — which struck 
me as approaching in magnitude the train shed of 
the South Station. It had about everything in the 
world stowed away there. Mindful of the resource- 
ful country store back in Carter's home town I 



SUGAR 199 

asked if they had a pulpit, but he said he thought 
not. He had a metal casket or two, for emergencies, 
and about every kind of grocery and canned goods 
that is known to man ; also hardware, dry goods, oil 
and gasoline. But they were just out of pulpits. 

That seemed to exhaust the subject, so we were 
speedily whirled away by Arturo and Antonio. I 
appreciate sugar somewhat more than I did — 
even during the shortage. It doesn't look very 
much like the article you get for your table when it 
leaves Porto Rico ; but, of course, when it gets up to 
Boston it gets refined — like everybody else in that 
cultured place — and becomes holier and better. I 
hope some day to see a refinery at work. But when 
I want to remember Carter I shall go around to the 
grocer's and call for a pound of brown sugar, sit 
down on a hot day in front of a roaring fire, and 
scoop up a generous handful to eat. Yummy ! The 
first taste is good — but how it stays by you ! 



CHAPTER XIV 
FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 

FROM Coamo to Ponce is but a step as the 
motor flies — that is to say, short of twenty- 
five miles by a most excellent road. One of the 
writers whose works I have read describes this 
jaunt as reminding one of New England — "either 
Connecticut or the Berkshires." It must be, then, 
because it is so different. It would not occur to me 
to think of either the Berkshires or Connecticut on 
that run — save that macadam looks about the 
same the world over. 

The road follows along near the sea, over a 
gently undulating country flanked on the one side 
by the blue Caribbean and on the other by the 
abrupt hills of the interior. The vegetation is not 
the vegetation of New England — not at about 
eighteen degrees north of the Equator! It is more 
like the vegetation of South than North America, 
naturally. 

In the end you roll across a bridge that proudly 
announces its building by the American army of 
occupation in 1900 or thereabouts. It is not a very 
pretty bridge, and it is "hogged" a little in the 




w 
u 

-"^ 
o 

o 

H 
Q 

Pii 

W 
W 
H 

o 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 201 

middle, as the sailors would say. Possibly this is 
due to earthquakes, which they have occasionally 
in that neck o* the woods. But it is a bridge that 
carries you safe over and therefore it is one of which 
to speak well. Eventually you pass a country club 
(members only admitted) and find yourself in 
Ponce. 

Ponce is not a pretty town at all. Owing to the 
frequency of quakes it seldom aspires to buildings 
of more than two stories and is usually content with 
one. The streets are all "dirt" streets. As you pass 
through the city for the first time you are most 
impressed by the fire department, which occupies 
a spacious building near the principal plaza and 
which daily rolls back the doors and takes off the 
dust covers to let you see the motorized hose reels. 
It is a very good-looking fire department. Whether 
it ever has much work to do I don't know. It did n't 
have to do any while I was there, but it was on 
daily exhibition and it made one feel uncommon 
safe. 

Hard by was a cathedral, much the worse for 
wear because of the unusually big quake of the pre- 
ceding autumn, which had torn off all the upper 
part of the fagade, but without disturbing a very 
large and handsome oriel window. Indeed, all down 
the adjacent streets one might see houses stripped 



202 SAILING SOUTH 

open and rent by the quake, leaving the upper 
rooms in somewhat the condition of the doll-houses 
of our childhood. 

Despite the frequent sprinkling, the dirt streets 
are dusty in the prevailing wind — when they are 
not a mass of slippery mud. It is n't nearly as at- 
tractive as San Juan, and yet it has some things 
that San Juan has not — notably gardens. One 
found gardens everywhere, usually walled out of 
sight, save as the flowering vines and trees clambered 
over the tops. The ladies affirmed also that it had 
better shops than San Juan and that the people 
seemed to speak more English. Nevertheless the 
prevailing opinion seems to be that Ponce is rather 
a stupid place — flat, stale, and unprofitable from 
the tourist standpoint, usually very hot, and al- 
ways beset by millions of mosquitoes. 

Having said which, let me add with decorous haste 
that during our stay, which was indeed but four 
days, the air was delightfully cool, and the mosqui- 
toes, while present in the expected numbers, did not 
seem particularly voracious. Of course they are not 
the wicked kind of pest that brings the yellow fever. 
That's all over and done with. Porto Rico has 
been sanitated to the queen's taste. The Millers of 
Dee had prudently looked up the mosquito ques- 
tion before venturing thither, but unfortunately 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 203 

had confused the data. They could n't remember 
whether the dangerous mosquito landed on you 
head-first or vice versa. We were compelled to take 
chance. 

Ponce is theoretically a seaport — but so is Los 
Angeles. Ponce is only about three miles from the 
ocean, and Los Angeles is about twenty — but each 
is just as proud of the seaport idea as Boston, and 
each is connected with its real port and docks by 
tram. All day long, alternating one with another, 
street-cars go clanging down the dusty road to Ponce 
Playa and Ponce Muelle — respectively the beach 
and the pier. If you inspect the beach you will find 
that it is n't really much of a beach. It is a muddy 
settlement only less far from the sea than Ponce it- 
self. But the pier is the real thing, and as it pro- 
jects into the waters it seems to provide about all the 
actual harborage there is on that side of the island. 

There are, however, one or two small islands just 
offshore which help to make it look like a harbor, 
and within sight there is a very considerable out- 
lying island rejoicing in the name of "Caja de 
Muertos" — the Dead Man's Chest. Some one had 
told the Mogul that this was what Stevenson had in 
mind when he referred to that immortal ditty: 

"Sixteen men on the Dead Man's Chest — 
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! 



204 SAILING SOUTH 

Drink and the Devil had done for the rest — 
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum." 

Now I always thought that it meant the men were 
sitting on the dead man's ditty-box — but the 
Mogul says no. He believes that they were sitting 
marooned on the Caja de Muertos. It seems fishy 
to me. 

There are just about three really good hotels in 
Porto Rico, and at least one of these is in Ponce. It 
is a good hotel as such things go in the tropics. It 
is kept by a delightful old French lady, a widow who 
speaks all languages indifferent well. Mindful of 
her homeland after forty years of absence she calls 
her hostelry Hotel Frances — AnglicS, "French 
Hotel." It occupies a wind-swept corner and runs 
in two spreading wings along two streets, a deep 
courtyard of much greenery lying within. One 
breakfasts in the court, if one wishes. One dines in 
a lofty banquet-hall, the doors of which open full on 
the outer square next the main street. A homelike 
touch is afforded by the railroad which runs just 
across the street and devotes the nocturnal hours to 
the shifting of freight cars. Between the engine bell 
and the mosquitoes your first night in Ponce in the 
French Hotel is likely to be wakeful. The second 
night, thanks to weariness ensuing from the first, one 
does n't mind. 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 205 

Every room has a tiny alcove in which are the 
toilet arrangements, including a shower bath. This 
appeals to one more at first sight than later — be- 
cause in the morning when you essay the matutinal 
shower you discover that forty divisions of shock- 
troop mosquitoes are mobilized there, ascending in a 
cloud as you enter in the state of nature suitable to 
bathing, and bent on making as much as possible 
of the glorious opportunity which your condition 
affords. Your one recourse is to drown them while 
they bite. 

Arturo and Antonio, charioteers to our caravan, 
did not take very kindly to the programme we un- 
folded before them as to motor trips from Ponce. 
They had bargained for so much money a week, plus 
allowance for their keep on a per diem basis — but it 
developed that their idea of a week's trip was to 
circle the island, always in one general direction, 
and always toward the point of beginning. The idea 
of scooting away across the island to Arecibo and 
then away back to Ponce, when one could go back 
in much less time to San Juan, seemed to them both 
extravagant of gasoline and destructive of profits. 
"Gas" in Porto Rico costs some grandiose price 
which I have forgotten — about fifty cents, for a 
guess. Moreover the roads, while splendid, are hilly 
and use up a lot of distance in curves in order to 



206 SAILING SOUTH 

cover forty linear miles, which means a lot of fuel. 
Arturo and Antonio looked glum enough when they 
found out how the week was to be put in. For the 
moment they had no recourse, but as you will see, 
Arturo at least was equal to the emergency. 

I arose bright and early, awakened by a tropic 
sun. The public garden across the way was deserted 
save for Arturo Cantellupi, who was revealed mani- 
curing his shapely hands while reclining in unstud- 
ied grace upon a park bench under an umbrageous 
tree. Antonio was nowhere to be seen. The sched- 
ule called for a start at eight-thirty — but by this 
time one knew that eight-thirty meant an hour 
later, at least in P.R. This is the reverse of daylight 
saving. 

Arturo spied me, airily attired, on my balcony 
and waved a cordial salute. His lips moved and I 
caught floating up to me the familiar morning plaint, 
"Give me some money. I broke." Whatever the 
linguistic deficiency of Arturo and Antonio, the 
bright lexicon of their youth at least contained the 
English words most useful for expressing complete 
financial destitution. "I broke" was the usual an- 
nouncement which accompanied the call of incense- 
breathing Morn. 

Having wafted sundry kopecs to the waiting Ar- 
turo, I disappeared within and Arturo betook him- 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 207 

self to the lair in which he kept his car. One always 
trusted he would appear again — and usually he did ; 
but that was before he despaired of coming out even 
on the gasoline question. To-day at least he was 
back with Antonio at nine-thirty and we took the 
Arecibo road. 

I suppose there may be finer rides in the world. 
There are said to be some at least as fine in Porto 
Rico itself. But to my mind that flight from Ponce 
to Arecibo in the freshness of the morning has 
advantages over any ride that it has been my for- 
tune to take — and I 've had some fine ones first and 
last, over the Amalfi Road, over the Grande Cor- 
nice, over divers and sundry Swiss passes, and over 
the Greek mountains from Andritsaena to Olympia; 
but none of them offered anything much more 
splendid than that gorgeous tropic highroad, as it 
wound in spiral curves up the mountain ridges of 
Porto Rico. Arturo was in his element. The motor 
roared obedient to his toe. The squawking of his 
horn awoke the echoes of the mountain glens. We 
missed peasants, bullock-carts, good old-fashioned 
Concord buggies (which are still common in rural 
Porto Rico), wayside funerals, and mammoth mo- 
tor lorries, all by the merest hair. Antonio, his 
locks floating in the wind, followed after. We rose 
up on wings as eagles. Ponce and its plain soon lay 



208 SAILING SOUTH 

at our feet. In an hour we were weaving our way 
amid the remote and craggy heights that we had 
marveled at from below. The banks were aglow with 
flowers. Water dripped coolly down the sides of 
shadowy cliffs, and broad-bladed banana-trees 
arched the road. After the flat stupidity of the plain 
these verdure-clad mountains, cloaked in fruit and 
coffee, were an unmixed delight. 

Then down, down, down — sweeping around 
blind corners, skimming the edge of precipices, 
dashing through tiny rivulets at the apex of deep 
mountain dells, across an inland valley, up another 
mountain chain, and on, on, on — always at a con- 
servative thirty-five to forty miles an hour! I con- 
fess I like to take my scenery in more leisurely 
fashion — but Arturo had promised to land us in 
Arecibo in three hours and a half. He did it. An- 
tonio was not more than fifteen minutes behind. I 
would n't have missed it for five hundred dollars and 
I secretly affirmed that I would n't do it again for 
fifty thousand dollars — with Arturo. 

Arecibo itself was n't much to see. The Atlantic 
Ocean roared with incessant breakers against its 
white wall of beach sand, and the sun bore down 
with more than Oriental splendor. I After a brief 
stroll on the water-front I was virtually blind and 
deaf — between the glare of the sun and the roar 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 209 

of the surf. But there was a "tolerable locanda," 
as Baedeker would have said of the inn, and a 
lunch that was reasonably good. 

It was on the way home that the guileful Arturo 
bethought himself of a plan for getting out of his 
ruinous bargain. His engine suddenly began to give 
trouble — but not until we were within hail of 
Ponce. Down the last long grade he was able to 
keep moving by reliance on the good old law of 
gravitation ; but once we were in the plain and only 
two miles from home, his machine simply lay down 
and died. He tinkered vainly for an hour in the dusk. 
Then a Ford came by, with two extra seats in it — 
and in these Katrina and Mrs. Mogul were ferried to 
the French Hotel. They reported later that Arturo's 
mad driving was mild as milk by comparison. The 
Ford raced another Ford all the way to town, 
through traffic, and up to the hotel door. And its 
driving was like the driving of Jehu. 

The Mogul and I stayed by the ship until after 
dark Antonio came back with a relief party. We 
got home to dinner. Arturo got home somehow 
during the night — "all done — finish." He was 
paid off and discharged to his apparent relief and to 
the envious dismay of Antonio, who had n't thought 
of having his machine go bad so opportunely. It 
looked as if we were marooned. 



2IO SAILING SOUTH 

And then out of the dark there came one Augus- 
tino Rodriguez, with a glorious big new car, resplend- 
ent in red paint, anxious for a cargo back to San 
Juan next day. We were saved. I had uncomforta- 
ble thoughts of going back by rail — an eleven- hour 
jaunt; but Rodriguez saved the situation admirably. 
He proceeded at a pace consistent with inward and 
holy calm. At the finest points he invariably paused 
and inquired solicitously, "You wish make picsh?" 
an invitation to embalm the scenery permanently in 
kodak form. And at an hour conformable to Sun- 
day luncheon he had us back at the Palace Hotel in 
San Juan, sunburned, dusty, and well content. 

Next day while walking in the Plaza, Katrina was 
aware of one who, from the shade of the ilexes, 
uttered an ear-arresting " Pzst ! " It was Arturo the 
Canteloupe. He had got the defunct car home after 
all — probably with a lucrative fare, at that. And 
so far from bearing malice, he was bowing, smiling, 
and waving a shapely and well-manicured hand. 

So much for motoring in the island. It affords 
a pleasant interlude and the fleeting experiments 
chronicled here by no means exhaust the possibili- 
ties. I have said nothing of the easterly end of the 
island toward Fajardo — perhaps in its way the 
pleasantest of all, because of its greater coolness in 
addition to its prospects of mountain and sea. I 




< 
u 

w 
w 

H 

fa 

o 

W 
Q 

O 
W 



FROM PONCE TO ARECIBO 211 

have omitted the easily possible excursion through 
San German with its venerable church to Mayaguez 
— a town which, while presently stricken as the 
result of recent quakes, is of growing importance as 
a port of call. One with sufficient time at his dis- 
posal will discover these things for himself and will 
upon mature acquaintance choose as his favorite 
haunts the places which most nearly fulfill his 
heart's desire. 

But the universal conclusion, I suspect, will be 
that after all is said and done the most livable part 
of Porto Rico is in the environs of San Juan, with 
its delectable suburbs, its teeming harbor, its 
gayety, and an abundant social life of which a 
prolonged stay usually suffices to make one most 
agreeably aware. The grassy spaces outside the 
walls, with their broad outlook upon the illimitable 
ocean; the shady grounds of the venerable Casa 
Blanca; the moss-grown old fortresses; the inde- 
scribable mixture of the modern with the ancient, of 
the present with the past ; the survivals of the half- 
legendary Spanish days rubbing elbows with the 
trig new schools, new hospitals, new universities — 
all these are the special charms of San Juan. There 
is, I am told, a promising plan on foot for a genuine 
college to be devoted chiefly to vocational culture, 
the beginnings of which have already foreshadowed 



212 SAILING SOUTH 

success, in a more remote part of the island ; but to 
me San Juan remains the chief of Porto Rican 
memories. San Juan is the first sight that greets you 
after five days of sailing — and it is the last that 
attends you when the vessel on which you sail turns 
again home. 



PART THREE 
JAMAICA 



CHAPTER XV 
KINGSTON 

THROUGH the open porthole as I woke, I be- 
came aware of an incredibly splendid star. 
It was low on the horizon and it glared like an 
enormous headlight in the first flush of dawn. It was 
probably Venus. 

I sprang from my bunk and thrust an eager head 
into the morning freshness. The sea was calm and 
the white ship was rushing through it joyously, 
leaving little waves of foam. Over in the east against 
the growing light of another day could be seen 
masses of tumbling mountains — very obviously 
the southern headlands of Haiti. It was the sort of 
morning that will always justify calling your wife 
from slumber in order to share it. I called Katrina — 
who thrust another eager head out of the adjacent 
porthole and also saluted this distant prospect of the 
isle containing the Black Republic. And then it was 
time to pack the trunk, because between-decks in 
these low latitudes it gets very hot at midday and 
one is wise to stay on deck as much as one may. 

If we saw Haiti at dawn we should be in Jamaica 
at eve. Hence the trunk. 



2i6 SAILING SOUTH 

The island of Jamaica is far-seen. When we came 
on deck after breakfast, there it lay on our starboard 
bow — a blue cloud which the eye at first refused to 
accept as mountains. By noon it was close at hand 
and the various features of it were more plain to 
discern. Yet always one beholding a rugged coast 
from far at sea refuses to consider it personally at 
all. That this is a land of men is hardly realized. 
Men must be microscopic ants, indeed, when you 
look upon this heaving mass of mountains! What is 
man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or the son of 
man that Thou visitest him? Here is the immensity 
of the sea, and yonder the vastness of the land rising 
fold on fold, in mountain or in cape. If there be men, 
they are lost. They are atoms. You face the great 
elements of God's creation; and man — who boasts 
himself God's noblest creature — is forgotten until 
you get ashore and lose the perspective. Then, alas, 
man forces himself upon you as both very real and 
very important. 

We coasted along the eastern shores of Jamaica 
all the forenoon. B., who had lived there as a boy 
and who still had possessions in the island, produced 
a glass and through it revealed his plantations and 
his house. And we knew that from the house we, 
too, had been observed; for presently a motor scur- 
ried away down the shore road to head us off at 



KINGSTON 217 

Kingston — its flight betokened by a cloud of dust. 
Red cliffs along the shore opened and revealed 
inlets where tiny boats were loading bananas and 
cocoanuts. The abrupt slopes were covered with 
that tropical verdure which always seems to a north- 
ern eye so "stagy" and unreal. 

Then we swung westward and overtook the sand- 
spit that thrusts out for several miles, in a long, 
curving arm, engulfing a sheltered bay and forming 
thus the great and perfectly sheltered harbor of 
Kingston, the capital city. On the very tip of this 
sandy parenthesis perches a tiny hamlet named Port 
Royal, which is the quarantine station — a hot, 
palm-embowered settlement of red roofs set amidst 
greenery, and strongly suggestive of a shrimp salad 
with lettuce. 

We lay a long time at Port Royal awaiting the 
port authorities — who apparently were taking their 
siesta and had no mind to be aroused untimely. 
Hard by the U.S.S. Dixie was fast aground in a 
shoal, and naval tugs labored to get her free. The 
cool sweep of the trade wind mitigated the sun's 
midsummer glare. The palms on shore waved their 
fans — as O. Henry says, "like an awkward chorus 
heralding the entrance of a prima donna." The 
captain, anxious to get into port, cursed the stolidity 
of the quarantine — and we waited. 



2i8 SAILING SOUTH 

I now approach with diffidence and all due hu- 
mility the story of how Katrina and I figured for an 
hour or two as moral lepers, suspected by the Gov- 
ernment and avoided by our comrades of the ship. 

The port officials finally arrived. They were 
native Jamaicans, dusky of skin, but loyal subjects 
of King George. They wore white suits, white 
helmets, and were garbed also in a little brief au- 
thority. They came up a ladder and we were all 
ordered to meet them in the dining-saloon. This is 
quite the usual thing, and one never gets over the 
uneasy feeling that one is a potential criminal — 
or a potential plague-spot. But as a rule nobody 
is, and after a while the red tape is exhausted so 
that all hands may go on. 

This day there came also a native officer of immi- 
gration whose disposition was to magnify his office. 
He first pounced upon Mr. B., whose two children 
were with him, but who were not mentioned in the 
passport. Aha! Here may be trickery! "Sah, you 
say these your two children. The passport not men- 
tion them! How I know they your children?" 

Mr. B. said he knew they were his, but the dusky 
inspector brushed this aside as not evidence. It 
seemed to him a very dark, dire, and probably dan- 
gerous business. That any sane man would make 
himself trouble by traveling with children not his 



KINGSTON 219 

own did not strike this suspicious party as at all 
unlikely. So he set the B. family aside for further 
consideration. Then he pounced on Mr. C, who 
carried a British passport. 

"Your name don't sound English," proclaimed 
the inspector with a glare of further suspicion. 

"And you don't look English," retorted C, who 
is in fact Welsh with a nine-hundred-years-old name. 

This silenced the inspector and C. got by. 

Then came our downfall. I presented passports 
bearing pictures of Katrina and me. We are not 
proud of these pictures. They make me look like 
Big Bill Haywood in a curiously angry mood, while 
Katrina looks like Emma Goldman. The inspector 
compared us with the pictures. I blushed. The in- 
spector looked dubious. 

Then he brightened — he had found us out — 
and he pounced on us with all zest. "You have not 
got a vise for this place," he shouted. 

"A vise? Do I need one?" 

" Yassah. You goin' to have trouble gettin* asho'." 

"No one told me to get one," I faltered — which 
was true. For with all the red tape I had to go 
through in New York no one had ever told me to 
seek out the British Consul for a vis6 in order to go 
to Jamaica. I knew you had to do it in war-time, and 
even in peace if you were going to queer places like 



220 SAILING SOUTH 

Russia and Turkey. But Jamaica? Well — the 
man was evidently right and we were wrong, and our 
good repute fell from us like a garment. We were 
alone to blame, too. We ought to have known — 
but we did n't. 

"You cannot land until you get a permit from the 
inspector-general," thundered the potentate in a 
voice suggestive of dungeons and boiling oil. "You 
can't land!" 

K. and I, very crestfallen, slunk away and sat 
isolated on the decks. Spies! Obvious alien enemies! 
One sweet lady came and sat with us, and cheered us 
as best she could — she was Mrs. B., suspected of 
not owning her own children. Together we sur- 
veyed a palm-clad world from which the glory had 
departed. 

And then came the captain, tall, tanned, cheerful, 
and contemptuous of red tape, to say we should be 
cared for in due season in Kingston. "You won't 
be delayed an hour," said he. "This always happens 
to some one. The consul always comes aboard and 
fixes them up." 

So it proved. The consul did appear — a delight- 
ful gentleman from the South who brushed all 
difficulties aside and made the rough places smooth. 
Inside of a quarter-hour we were free. Before most 
of the passengers we had passed the customs, and 



KINGSTON 221 

before sunset we were ensconced in a breezy room at 
the Myrtle Bank Hotel looking forth through a 
palm-dotted park toward the bluest of blue harbors. 
The troubles of the afternoon vanished as if at an 
enchanter's wand. The lawn was gay with fair 
women and brave men, sitting at little tables and 
sipping things no longer to be had in the United 
States. 

To those of us who are now in that blest estate 
called middle life, it hardly seems a score of years 
since the Spanish War. Why, it's only yesterday! 
And yet it really is almost twenty-five years since 
we first had "Kingston, Jam." as the dispatches 
used to call it, brought seriously to our attention. 

In those days the festive press correspondents who 
hovered around the southern coast of Cuba used to 
make a bee-line for Jamaica when they had news to 
send. Jamaica lies only a scant hundred miles south 
of Santiago de Cuba, and as the cable office was 
around on the southern side of the island, at King- 
ston, that was where most of the news came from — 
invariably labeled, "By way of Kingston, Jam.; 
delayed in transmission." 

Now, Kingston, if the truth has to be told about 
it, is one of the hottest, dustiest, and, at first sight, 
most unprepossessing cities in the world. It leads a 
lazy and largely uneventful life — save on those 



222 SAILING SOUTH 

rare occasions when the Spanish War sends the in- 
vading reporters scurrying thither to file more or 
less mendacious messages, or when an earthquake 
mixes things up, or when a colonial governor reveals 
a discourteous desire to tell the American navy to go 
to blazes, or maybe when a hurricane comes along. 
At all other times Kingston is simply a flat, hot, 
dusty, negro town, with an incomparable harbor and 
a lassitudinous climate. 

The last great earthquake was in 1907. The city 
has not yet entirely recovered, and as it lies just 
above a sandy substratum which feels to an exces- 
sive degree the earth tremors whenever they occur, 
it lives in a semi-conscious apprehension as to the 
next big quake. Hence it does not go in for buildings 
of a very imposing character, but constructs rather 
lightly with a strong predilection for the corrugated 
iron brand of roof. The streets are open and wide — 
where, according to all the traditions of a hot climate, 
they ought to be narrow and very deep so that they 
might be cool. Architecturally and scenically there 
is no comparison between Kingston and San Juan 
in Porto Rico, which does not show the latter to 
advantage. 

I have said Kingston is a negro town, but in that 
respect it is like every other place in Jamaica. Traces 
of the Spanish occupation are difficult to find, 



KINGSTON 223 

whereas in Porto Rico they are eveirywhere. But 
of course that is only natural. The Spaniards did n't 
last long in Jamaica — not more than one hundred 
and fifty years — and the British have had the is- 
land ever since the piping times of Cromwell. The 
really curious thing is that traces of the current 
British occupation are almost as hard to find as 
traces of the ancient Spanish. I used to wonder at 
finding the Americans had made so small an impres- 
sion on the outward face of things in San Juan, after 
twenty years of control there; but what shall one 
say of Jamaica, where after several centuries of 
colonial oversight the British have made similarly 
small outward impressions on the island? 

To be sure, the native negro speaks English — 
but it is not always very good English; and more 
especially when one overhears two natives in ani- 
mated conversation it is difficult, indeed, to com- 
prehend. It might be a foreign language as well as 
not, and I suppose it amounts to that. But it is a 
rather fascinating language, uttered in a voice that 
makes you sigh to be reared on bananas yourself if 
it will produce any such melodious tone after a 
generation or two. 

You will probably be told, when you first go to 
Jamaica, that the negroes are insufferable beggars. 
The fact is they are n't any more insufferable than 



224 SAILING SOUTH 

any beggars in any land where tourist travel is 
common. The wayside children will gleefully ex- 
tend their hands shouting, "Gimmee monee!" But 
they don't expect you will give them money, and 
they grin over the demand as if they knew it was a 
delicious joke. I have not discovered any marked 
propensity among the adult population to beg — 
not nearly so much as I have observed in Italy. 
But first impressions are bound to be strong and 
lasting ; and the fact is that one landing in Kingston 
among the water-front darkies will be impressed at 
first by the mendicancy common to all water-fronts 
in the world. 

It begins when the steamer is being warped into 
her pier. A score of naked boys, as black as ebony, 
will certainly be disporting in the sea — precisely 
as they do in Madeira, or in Naples — swim- 
ming about, rolling over, diving after coins, and 
beseeching the curious crowd that hangs over 
the steamer rail to throw money down in order 
to give them the chance to show their aquatic 
prowess. 

"Shoot me a nickel, Judge!" (The Jamaica 
darkey loves to flatter you with titles.) "Shoot me 
a nickel, Doc! " — or maybe he hails you as "Chief." 
Those to whom all this is a novelty will of course 
provide the necessary largess and the scramble that 



KINGSTON 225 

ensues among rival divers is on the whole well 
worth the donation. 

By the time the ship is made fast and by the 
time passengers are officially permitted to go 
ashore, the land army of the predatory poor is 
always mobilized and waiting. It takes the form of 
volunteer porters and carriage touts. The dock is 
a hot place, smelling of spices and carefully fenced 
off from the mitigating breeze. It is roofed with the 
omnipresent corrugated iron, cooking under the 
blazing afternoon. One pays whatever price one is 
asked, to be quickly out of it. One is conscious that 
it is a country where, to say the least, white men 
do not predominate. Customs officers are of dusky 
hue. So are the porters, drivers, chauffeurs, and 
dock watchmen. 

Now, if you are wise and if you have had expe- 
rience with landings in strange ports, you will make 
up your mind to be more or less agreeably swindled 
as the price of your initiation. One may not com- 
plain. It's the way of the world. It used to be just 
as common in Boston, when the hackmen charged 
unsuspecting visitors a dollar to drive from the old 
Lowell Depot to the Fitchburg Depot — only a 
few doors away. I suspect it is done everywhere. 
So you cheerfully shell out small change as you 
progress down the aromatic pier, sweltering past 



226 SAILING SOUTH 

the customs; and finally you emerge in the dusty 
street beyond, where rival claimants bespeak your 
patronage for their vehicles, each of them frankly a 
highway robber preying upon the innocent. 

On the second visit you will be wise and not such 
an easy victim; but that glorious first time is sure 
to be a harvest for the myriad who find in steamer- 
day their chief source of revenue. The motor- 
driver unblushingly asks you $1.50 to take you to 
the Myrtle Bank — five minutes away at best. 
The light local carriages cheerily demand fifty 
cents — although next day you will find that the 
regular fare for a "course" is only sixpence per 
person. Who cares? This is Jamaica — and a week 
ago one was freezing in New York! Take, O Jehu, 
thrice thy fee! 

Riding through the late afternoon toward the 
hotel gives you a poor first glimpse of the town. 
You had n't looked for just this kind of a place. 
You had probably thought of it as ancient, with 
moss-grown walls casting a grateful shade. Instead 
it is all painfully new — hardly a dozen years old. 
Evidently it has n't rained very lately, or if it has 
it has dried up. Things have a rather barren look. 
The structures along the street seem discouraged 
and rather transitory. But eventually you turn 
into the courtyard of the Myrtle Bank and forget 



KINGSTON 227 

all about the rest — because all at once you have 
come upon genuine pleasantness and peace. 

No one is more alive to the fact that "Myrtle 
Bank" are two distinct and separate words than 
the telegraph office — one notes little points like 
that at a shilling a word! Presumably there is a 
justification alike for the separation and for the use 
of the epithet "Myrtle" — although you will prob- 
ably look in vain for the latter. But you will speed- 
ily agree that the prospect from the hotel, looking 
through an avenue of palms across a fair green 
lawn to the smooth bosom of the harbor, is infinitely 
beautiful; and when you discover those people in 
white garments seated in the shade below, sipping 
those mysterious beverages from tall glasses, the 
conquest is likely to be complete. You suddenly 
remember that you are hot and thirsty. The pro- 
cedure indicated in your case is perfectly clear. So 
you descend, secure a comfortable rocking-chair on 
the lawn, and consult with the gentlemanly at- 
tendant, who hovers watchfully about, as to the 
most suitable treatment for one just arrived by 
steamer from an arid and austere land. The waving 
palms of Jamaica are by no means the only insignia 
of an oasis which the land has to show. 

The most impressive thing about Kingston is 
always the heat. Being on the south side of the 



228 SAILING SOUTH 

island, it is naturally warmer than the towns of the 
north coast. It lies on a gradually rising slope 
which extends back several miles from the sea and 
then rather abruptly becomes a first-rate mountain 
something like seven thousand feet high. The chief 
peak of this mountain, called Blue Mountain and 
famed for its coffee, is seldom visible owing to 
persistent clouds. But at evening — or perhaps 
more often at very early dawn — it is often clear 
and always decidedly impressive. 

Down on the shore where Kingston lies the tem- 
perature is that of a good, hot summer day — per- 
haps 90° in the shade — ■ but usually tempered by 
a wind which blows off the sea during the daytime, 
and almost invariably by a cool breeze off the 
mountain by night. If you are wise you will seek 
quarters on the landward side of the hotel ; for while 
this is going to make it pretty hot in the daytime, 
it is almost sure to give you a decently cool night. 
People on that side of the hotel tell me they use 
blankets. On my side, which is toward the water, 
blankets strike you as a superfluity. My chamber 
door has a lattice, however, which you can hook — 
thus giving you a draught of air if you don't mind a 
modified publicity during slumber. 

I hasten to add that the Myrtle Bank is a very 
admirable hotel, and that it shares, with the Titch- 




THE WAVING PALMS OF JAMAICA 



KINGSTON 229 

field in Port Antonio, the distinction of being the 
only really pretentious hostelry in the island. Not 
that there are no other places to stay — for there 
are several, and very comfortable, too. But these 
twain are the only really first-grade hotels; and 
they are run, like so many other things in Jamaica, 
by the United Fruit Company. Years ago I used 
to be told that the U.F. Co. seemed to operate 
"nearly everything in Jamaica but the flag" — and 
now they will tell you that it runs about everything 
there that Sir John Pringle does n't. The United 
Fruit is vastly more in evidence, certainly, than the 
British Empire; and I am convinced that what 
things it does in Jamaica, as in other islands and 
countries of the Caribbean, it does extremely well. 
• After two or three somnolent days — during 
which you buy a new straw hat, or a pith helmet, 
and get used to the weather — you begin to poke 
about the town and find It much better than you 
expected at first. The main streets are still dis- 
appointing, architecturally — but you must n't ex- 
pect lofty houses, or very much brick and mortar, 
in a town which periodically tumbles into a heap 
because of some seismic disturbance. You find some 
rather decent shops — with no wares to sell which 
will seem to you at all bizarre, but with sales- 
people with whom it is a pleasure to deal. After the 



230 SAILING SOUTH 

studied discourtesy of many a New York shop the 
soft-spoken Jamaican clerk is a delight. 

Then there 's a great public market which every- 
body goes to in the early forenoon before the sun 
gets fully tuned up to its day's task. It is a vast 
open-sided shed, roofed with the inevitable iron 
and surrounding a sunlit square. You can buy 
nearly everything here that is good to eat. The 
exotic fruits of which you have heard — mangoes, 
bread-fruit, custard apples, star apples, ackies, 
yampies, plantains, yams — are all around, but you 
will probably find that they are n't really ripe until 
next month. There are vegetables, both familiar 
and otherwise — peas that have funny, bunchy 
pods, each pod in its separate compartment. But 
the tourist in quest of something to carry off as a 
memento will always drift over to the department 
where native baskets are to be had and will find 
therein abundant reward. Besides, it is a genuine 
pleasure to do business with these children of na- 
ture, with their soft-spoken negro dialect in which 
one is always called "Massa" or ** Mistress." One 
begins to fancy one's self! If I have heard one 
woman I have heard a hundred, moaning over the 
inability to import half the islanders of Jamaica to 
help solve the problem of domestic help in "the 
States." 



KINGSTON 231 

Transportation about town is accomplished 
chiefly by light Surrey wagons, known to the people 
as "busses." There are trolley cars, too, but they 
are useful chiefly to the residents who know how to 
use them. For the casual visitor the "bus" affords 
a cheap and sufficiently commodious vehicle. When 
you don't want a bus there are sure to be a dozen 
waiting in the next street. When you do want one 
they have generally vanished ; but one will turn up 
within a few blocks, always, and there is never any 
quibble over fares. Everybody knows it's sixpence 
a head — and as that is absurdly little, of course 
everybody rides. It is too warm to walk comfort- 
ably, anyhow. The little and rather bony horses 
seem not to mind it. 

Motor traffic is small, for the reason chiefly that 
"gas" is both scarce in quantity and prohibitive in 
price. The reigning figure this winter (1920) has 
been one dollar a gallon (British), or about ninety 
cents a gallon (American). On some occasions, 
when we have been motoring in outlying places 
and the tank got low, we could n't buy gasoline for 
love or money — and had to telephone back to that 
Good Fairy, the United Fruit, which could appar- 
ently rub a mysterious lamp and produce gasoline 
on a pinch almost anywhere — even as Moses smote 
the rock and produced a spring in the wilderness. 



232 SAILING SOUTH 

To atone for various shortcomings I went on 
Sunday to the church and sat among the people. It 
was an experience. I don't know how you had con- 
ceived it, but my impression was that the colored 
brother was always an African Methodist, or about 
every sort of church but the Episcopalian. In 
Jamaica he is of the Church of England, and what's 
more he does n't have to be prodded into attendance. 
The good local canon with whom I talked after the 
service told me that on Sundays the church was 
literally packed twice a day — at early morning 
communion and at vespers. At the midday service 
the crowd was smaller, but still impressive. Its 
Sunday clothes were a revelation. I saw one negro 
mammy with a court train nearly ten feet long. 

"We don't draw the color line here, as you ob- 
serve," said the canon. "Most of my parish are 
colored people, and white and colored worship to- 
gether." 

The choir boys were all negroes — with the ex- 
ception of one who seemed to me to be either Japa- 
nese, or Chinese. In fact you become used after a 
time to the presence of numerous Celestials, against 
whom there is apparently no local prejudice or 
exclusion policy. I recall seeing none in Oriental 
dress; but the features were unmistakable and inter- 
marriages have not eradicated the distinctive cast of 



KINGSTON 233 

countenance. One of the most ostentatious of the 
buildings in Kingston is the Chinese Free Masonic 
Home. 

After a bit you become quite used to seeing every- 
thing official done by the negro. There is an ebony 
policeman on guard at the comer — • a most gorgeous 
policeman in a hot-looking uniform of blue, with 
loads of torrid red trimmings and brass buttons. He 
grins a broad and charitable grin. I imagine his 
pride keeps him cool — for it 's a poor rule that won't 
work both ways. 

They always tell you, as in Porto Rico, on no 
account to hire a native chauffeur for a motor 
excursion, because the negro drivers are so reckless 
on the mountain curves — and then you discover 
that you can find none but native drivers anywhere. 
England, which rules the country, maintains a gov- 
ernor whom you seldom or never see. Apparently 
the negroes do the rest, ably assisted by a very small 
white population and by the extensive activities of 
the United Fruit. And yet, while there are some- 
thing like 900,000 negroes in the island, I have been 
told that not more than 28,000 are registered to 
vote — because there is a tax of ten shillings (about 
like our two dollar poll-tax) which only that num- 
ber either care, or are able, to pay. Not a prodigious 
amount of native voting is therefore done, and yet 



234 SAILING SOUTH 

every one seems fairly comfortable about it. I 
heard no mutter of unrest such as I heard so fre- 
quently the year before in Porto Rico. In Jamaica, 
man evidently wants but little here below and gets 
that little easily. Fuel problems worry him not at 
all. He wants ice rather than coal. A few pennies a 
day will keep any Jamaican going in the matter of 
food. It is an easy land to live in; and although it 
has not as yet seen its way clear to embrace the 
glorious doctrine of the teetotalers, I have to report 
that drunkenness among the natives seems very far 
from common. Perhaps this is due to the prices. The 
Hindu people — for there is a sizable coolie popu- 
lation in Jamaica — are prone to celebrate a little 
on Saturday nights, and there is usually an amusing 
session of the local police court every day, in which 
neighborhood quarrels get themselves aired ; but on 
the whole Jamaica seems on casual inspection to be a 
happy land. 

You will not be many hours in Jamaica before you 
realize that the present greatness of the island rests 
in the first instance upon the banana. About half a 
century ago a New England sea-captain, Lorenzo 
Baker, out of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, touched at 
the island bringing down with him from the North a 
general cargo. Having discharged it and entertaining 
the thrifty seaman's aversion to returning home in 



KINGSTON 235 

wholly unremunerative ballast, he cast about for 
something wherewith to fill his ship. Nothing but 
green bananas appeared to be available, and as a 
last resort the Cape Cod skipper took a sporting 
chance. At that time, incredible as it may seem, 
the banana was almost wholly unknown in northern 
latitudes. A few — a very few — had been brought 
into New York, but the reception accorded them 
was not sufficiently flattering to warrant a further 
importation. It remained for Captain Baker to 
bring into Boston — always an appreciative town — 
the fruit which is now so popular and so highly im- 
portant in the domestic economics of Jamaica. 

So profitable did this venture prove that Captain 
Baker went back and got some more — eventually 
acquiring lands of his own for banana culture 
and ultimately evolving the transportation system 
which, together with the plantations, formed the 
kernel of the present United Fruit Company. In 
short, Cap'n Lorenzo builded better than he knew, 
or could possibly have dreamed. 

The number of bunches of the fruit imported 
into the entire United States in, say, 1870 was but 
a few hundred. By 1900 the trade had grown to a 
total of $6,000,000 a year — and I have no statis- 
tics at hand to show what it is now, twenty years 
later, with the prices of all things away up in the 



236 SAILING SOUTH 

sky. But I do" know that from the tiny beginnings 
there has grown up a colossal "interest" which is 
under American control and which has proved to 
be the most successful exploiter of the tropics since 
the bygone days of Old Spain. Nor has the exploita- 
tion been a one-sided matter, as I may possibly 
have remarked elsewhere, since the condition of 
every part of the tropics thus invaded has been 
immensely improved in the process. 

The banana is a surprising tree — if indeed it be 
proper to call it a tree. In some ways it is more like a 
gigantic lily growing out of a species of enormous 
bulb. The claim is made that once a root is estab- 
lished it will spring up and bear fruit within eight or 
ten months. It sends out quantities of shoots — 
but these are usually cut back leaving one main 
trunk to bear fruit this year and one or two others 
to be ready for the next crop. It must be a poor hut 
in Jamaica that has n't a few banana-trees in its 
front yard. 

Always the banana- tree is an untidy thing. It has 
tremendous bladed leaves that hang down, five or 
six feet long, looking much like swords of the 
Samurai. These grow ragged and rusty after a time, 
and when finally too dry for anything else are used 
for thatching the roofs, or lining the walls of native 
huts. Meantime a serpentine shoot puts out from 



KINGSTON 237 

the upper part of the trunk, which eventually bears 
a bunch of bananas of a vivid and arsenical green. 
This shoot presents at the outset only a rudimen- 
tary bud, but later scales develop which turn into 
upward-pointing flowers. The bud remains and 
closes its career as a huge red blossom. The upward- 
pointing flowers become bananas, and they will 
probably number about one hundred and fifty to the 
bunch. The orthodox tree bears but one bunch a 
year; but when you have thousands and millions of 
these trees, all under scientific cultivation, as the 
big fruit-growers do, you can easily see what a tidy 
little business it may become. Especially so if you 
can control both ends — the buying and the selling 
— after the modern manner of large commercial 
organizations. 

Naturally the growth of the business has brought 
with it the scientific development of banana culture. 
The local manager, to whom I was early introduced 
and whom I may refer to occasionally as K., took 
me through a few of the orchards nearest to King- 
ston within a day or two of my advent and explained 
some of the difficulties encountered. The banana 
is not free from pests and diseases, which have to be 
sprayed for as well as prayed against. A genuine 
hurricane — happily not of frequent occurrence — 
will certainly lay flat every banana tree in its path ; 



238 SAILING SOUTH 

but I believe they meet this in part by inclining the 
trees in the direction from which such winds may 
be expected. 

In the big farms — which go locally by the 
unlovely name of "pens," by the way — systematic 
irrigation is practiced. Hurricane damage is of less 
moment in banana groves than in cocoanut forests 
because the banana is a quick-growing plant and 
can be propagated rapidly from cuttings; whereas 
a cocoanut palm takes a score of years to become 
fruitful and therefore has to be insured — for which 
purpose you discover that the cocoanut-trees, like 
the hairs of your head, are all numbered. 

I have never yet found any one who could tell me 
truly the difference between a banana and a plan- 
tain, although many have tried. A number of rules 
for distinguishing the two fruits are offered, all of 
them, I judge, lies. One will assert that bananas 
grow pointing upward, and plantains pointing down 
— and lo, you will find the plantains, like their more 
aristocratic neighbors, looking aloft! I have come to 
believe, speaking subject to correction, that a plan- 
tain is nothing more than a coarser brand of banana, 
larger in size, less delicate in flavor, and growing in 
smaller clusters. Baked plantain is an inevitable 
factor in all island meals, much as potatoes are at 
home. It is more palatable than the yam, also in- 



KINGSTON 239 

evitable, which in unskillful hands has all the inspir- 
ing flavor of a pine board. 

I discover in the books the statement that the 
banana does not grow wild — yet I find this hard to 
believe since it must have started wild somewhere. 
It may have been in India. Theophrastus somewhere 
refers to a mysterious Indian fruit which he called 
Musa sapientium — the Muse of the Wise — and 
science without too much warrant has adopted the 
idea that this refers to the banana of old. It is an 
extremely good food, whether for the wise or not, 
although less in food-value, I am told, than an equal 
weight of potato. Possibly you will appreciate your 
next banana more for knowing that it is of the 
ScitaminacecB family. Possibly not. 

It should be added for completeness that the usual 
height of a banana-tree is from fifteen to forty feet, 
the mean between those extremes being a fair state- 
ment of the case usually met. A ride through inter- 
minable groves of them does not greatly please the 
eye, but probably produces a pleasurable sensation 
in the region of the owner's pocketbook. I was 
informed (1920) that the price of an ordinary bunch 
of bananas on the tree was about seventy-five cents. 
They cost slightly more than that, as you may have 
noticed, when delivered over the counter at home; 
but it has cost some one a pretty penny to harvest, . 



240 SAILING SOUTH 

refrigerate, ripen, and store them in the interval, 
and naturally one also expects a profit on the total 
investment. 

Bananas are always picked green. If ripened on 
the tree they acquire a woody flavor and are spoiled. 
The Jamaican usually ripens his in a barrel, and those 
that are thus matured near the spot of origin cer- 
tainly do taste better than those freighted to a dis- 
tance. 

K. took me through a number of the plantations 
— chiefly banana "pens" — in each of which there 
was a little village for the workmen, a little school, 
and probably also a tiny church. There were also 
sections devoted to cocoanut, cocoa, sugar cane, and 
what-not, but the banana was the chief. I discovered 
to my reassurance that "copra," which I had 
vaguely guessed was a noisome snake, was really 
nothing but dried cocoanut after the essential oil has 
been expressed. The oil you will discover is increas- 
ingly in demand owing to its manifold uses and to its 
power of keeping indefinitely without deterioration. 
There are no snakes worth speaking of in Jamaica — 
although there are mongooses (possibly I mean 
mongeese?) and occasional ticks. The latter one may 
avoid by keeping away from long grass and from 
places frequented by cattle. I have never seen a 
Jamaica tick, but it was the thing about which I 



KINGSTON 241 

heard most before going to the island. If you get one 
under the skin, they say the proper course is to 
anoint the place with kerosene — in response to 
which unguent the tick politely backs out of your 
presence. Otherwise if you attempt to deal harshly 
with him he leaves his head behind and makes you 
trouble. 

Not much can be said for the rides immediately 
around Kingston from the scenic standpoint. The 
mountains lie farther back, and the foreground is a 
gently undulating plain traversed by roads which 
are both dusty and moderately rough. Nevertheless 
there are one or two things to see and marvel at — 
such, for instance, as the mammoth tree still called 
"Tom Cringle's Tree," which stands hard by the 
Spanish Town road. In appearance, and judging by 
its girth and height, it might as well have been 
Noah's. It is indescribably prodigious, and its trunk 
is fantastic with its huge folds of bark and its flying 
buttresses standing out all around as if to shore it up. 
It is a Cottonwood ; and such trees are not uncommon 
in the island, although seldom of this commanding 
size and obvious age. There is one nearly as notable 
at St. Ann, between the mammoth roots of which 
some ancient seafaring worthy caused his tomb to 
be constructed. The negroes prefer these trees, I 
think, as the material for their dugout canoes. 



242 SAILING SOUTH 

That there is any particular reason for calling 
this "Tom Cringle's Tree" I do not know. It is not 
probable that he was hanged from it. But it is cer- 
tain that he wrote a book — a much better book 
than this — called "Tom Cringle's Log" describ- 
ing his tropical voyages, which is still read by the 
curious and widely extolled by such as know it. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 

SINCE so much has been said of the minor dif- 
ficulties attending an actual advent in the 
island of Jamaica it is no doubt well to turn at once 
to a brief consideration of the island itself. It is, 
as has been remarked elsewhere, a sort of errant 
brother of the Antilles, which has strayed out of 
the otherwise fairly regular chain of the archipelago 
and taken up a position in the midst of the Carib- 
bean. 

It is an island of much the same size as Porto 
Rico, lying ninety miles south of the southern end 
of Cuba, and therefore about halfway between 
Porto Rico and the Central American coast. 
"About the size of Porto Rico" means that it is 
something short of one hundred and forty miles 
long, and not far from fifty miles wide. 

Lying perhaps eighteen degrees north of the 
Equator, it is naturally a warm spot; but as the 
thoughtful provisions of Nature have arranged a 
fairly constant trade wind, it is a very tolerable 
sort of heat. The mendacious official records which 
deal with the insular temperatures ask you to be- 



244 SAILING SOUTH 

lieve that the " maximum for ten years at Kings- 
ton has averaged 87.7° F." Maybe it has, but it 
feels more like ninety-five degrees when you are 
there. In the uplands the thermometer hardly 
varies at all throughout the year, and there is one 
place where they say it moves up and down 
through a range of only nine degrees. I believe this. 
I am also ready to believe that it makes little dif- 
ference what time of year you go there — although 
I met the vice-consul's wife one day, and she said 
that in June it was a great deal hotter than it was 
at Christmas, just as at home. She seemed quite 
serious about it because she had to be there usually 
throughout the summer. 

It rains in Jamaica. It rains more in some places 
than in others. For instance up in the high moun- 
tains — which are about as high as Mount Wash- 
ington — it averages a rainfall yearly of something 
around one hundred inches. Down in Kingston, 
the most nearly rainless spot, it manages to pile up 
forty-four inches in a year — which is n't far from 
our normal hereabouts, I think. While I was in 
Kingston it rained a good share of the whole year's 
supply, and it did it all in one afternoon, at that. 
In fact, in about two hours of that afternoon. These 
tropical downpours are the real thing when they 
happen. 




NATIVE HUT NEAR KINGSTON 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 245 

Now, Jamaica represents, I suppose, a volcanic 
upheaval in the midst of the sea. In consequence 
it has a very fertile soil; and equally it boasts 
abundant hot springs and frequent earthquakes. 
We had an earthquake the first night we were 
there. Katrina said there must be somebody under 
her bed. I had felt the same way about it, but had 
just wit enough to say it was probably an earth- 
quake, and go to sleep again. It was only a little 
quake, of what they call locally the "up-and-down" 
variety. These do no harm, as a rule. The lateral 
kind, when they occur, manage to upset things very 
generally. It is about eighteen years since the last 
big one, which mussed up Kingston as a whole and 
precipitated the unsavory Sweatenham incident, of 
which more anon. 

The other natural drawback is the West Indian 
hurricane, of which they get only a few bad speci- 
mens during a decade and chiefly in the autumn 
months, to the serious damage of the banana and 
cocoanut trees. 

But if you bar earthquakes, hurricanes, and tor- 
rential showers, the land has no drawbacks at all. 
There are no poisonous reptiles or insects. I have 
not heard that it sports the tarantula. Things will 
grow of their own accord. If you set out a banana 
shoot, it springs up and bears you a fine bunch of 



246 SAILING SOUTH 

bananas in about ten months. You don't need any 
heavy clothes. A palmleaf fan and an umbrella 
would suffice. 

The island is really a mountain that breaks the 
surface of the ocean and soars up into the sky about 
seven thousand feet at the topmost point. It has 
its lower points, by use of which the excellent 
roads and the poor local railroad manage to get 
across the island. It has its intervales and valleys — 
some of them very curious ones. Made as it is of a 
limestone which is fairly soluble in water, and being 
copiously rained upon, the surface of the land has 
been eaten into enormous potholes which they call 
"cockpits" — sometimes of enormous depth. The 
whole place is alive with springs — and I believe 
the name Jamaica is Indian for "Isle of Springs." 
There are loads of brawling rivers, navigable only in 
a few cases by bamboo rafts. And the rivers have 
an uncomfortable way of disappearing in the ground 
only to reappear somewhere else, very likely on the 
other side of a hill. 

The island is better wooded than Porto Rico, and 
yet considering its location in about the same lati- 
tude, the trees are surprisingly different. The royal 
palm is n't native in Jamaica at all — but there is 
an abundance of the other varieties and they have 
the pleasant tropical habit of growing right down 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 247 

to the edge of the sea, very much as if they thought 
it a mere lake, or river. The cocoanut-palm is 
everywhere. So is the handsome pimento-tree, 
which is another name for allspice. The books say 
this tree grows nowhere else — at least not natu- 
rally. There are, of course, bananas till you can't 
rest. Also logwood, mango, breadfruit, oranges, 
and acacias. But you miss the flamboyant poin- 
cianas of Porto Rico with their flaming color, save 
when you venture into such arboretums as the 
Hope Gardens near Kingston, or the huge Castle- 
ton preserve nineteen miles out, in the heart of the 
great mountain range which cuts the island in 
twain running east and west. But you will hardly 
see a hill so precipitous that it is n't cultivated 
right up to its top — sometimes to your amazement 
because it looks as if nobody but a mountain goat 
could get up there. Only about 70,000,000 acres 
are devoted to bananas — a mere bagatelle! I 
don't find any record of how many cocoanut acres 
there are, but I think they told me that something 
like 30,000,000 cocoanuts were shipped out last 
year. As you ride around you come to appreciate 
the cocoanut. It grows in clusters, at the top of a 
palm that looks like a rather dilapidated feather- 
duster we once had to dust off the carriages when I 
was a boy at home. 



248 SAILING SOUTH 

It is a sin to steal a cocoanut. It is so much of a 
sin that any negro caught at it will be sent off to 
jail for a sizable term. This probably has to be 
done in order to impress the native with the valid 
distinctions between Meum and Tuum — twin 
gods for whom he would otherwise have small 
reverence. But if you can get a native to shin up a 
tree and gather you a lawful cocoanut, it is worth 
seeing done; and if it is a green cocoanut, he will 
chip off the top and give you a drink that reconciles 
you to thirst in order to repeat the dose. Cocoanut 
water is a somewhat overrated beverage in my 
judgment — it certainly does not compare for se- 
ductiveness with the planter's punch; but it is 
mildly sweet, always cool, and very refreshing in its 
ladylike way. 

The cocoanut-palms are all numbered, when cul- 
tivated. This, they told us, is for insurance pur- 
poses. The insurance is against the hurricanes, 
which, when they come, usually bend these great 
trees like whiplashes and generally lay them flat. 
Inasmuch as it takes cocoanut-trees about as long 
as it takes a human being to arrive at the age of re- 
productiveness, it is no light matter to lose a lot of 
them in a storm. 

Jamaica dawned on the consciousness of civili- 
zation about the time of Columbus, of course. He is 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 249 

supposed to have touched there on one of his voy- 
ages, as he is alleged to have touched at about 
every island in the Antilles. The Spaniards nat- 
urally took over the place, and their actual occu- 
pation began in 1509. They only lasted until 1665, 
however, when a British admiral sailed in and cap- 
tured the island. Even during their one hundred 
and fifty years the Spaniards had n't bothered 
much about it, being concerned for gold of which 
Jamaica offered none. There were only three 
thousand inhabitants there when the English took 
it. At the present time it has about a million people 
— five sixths of them colored and virtually devoid of 
any voice whatever in the government. Some Bol- 
shevik will probably start them to thinking they 
ought to vote — which will be a pity because they 
are as happy as clams now, and they won't be then. 
Why can't Bolsheviki let happy people alone? 

Spanish traces are very few. Montego Bay, a re- 
mote resort, is a name derived from Manteca Bay; 
and manteca is Spanish for butter, or lard. I forget 
just why they called it that, but there was a reason. 
"Bog Walk," which isn't at all what its name 
suggests, is derived from Boca del Agua (Mouth of 
the River), but that fact bothers no one at all. 
Spanish Town, a hamlet some fifteen miles out of 
Kingston, is n't Spanish any more. 



250 SAILING SOUTH 

In the course of past centuries the island was 
flooded with slaves, from whom spring the present 
vast negro population. They were emancipated in 
1834: so you see the British beat us to it; and, 
furthermore, the owners of the slaves were com- 
pensated for the "property" they lost — which 
also surpassed our method in some respects. But 
the landlords were none the less disgusted and got 
out of the island in huge numbers, so that it has 
taken a long time to get business rehabilitated. It's 
fine now, though. 

By the way. Canon Ripley of the First Parish 
Church told me this yarn: The Dutch originally 
occupied Manhattan Island and the British had 
great South American possessions in Guiana. Being 
alert for the main chance, some British statesmen 
offered to swap a section of Guiana for the island 
on which then stood Nieuw Amsterdam. The 
Dutch, being stolidly unforseeing, said it was a 
go — and thus potential New York passed into 
British hands in exchange for Dutch Guiana. The 
Englishmen living in Guiana chose not to live under 
Dutch control and emigrated to Jamaica, which was 
already a British possession. "Therefore," said the 
canon with a twinkle, "we are always glad to see 
people from New York." 

Even now, I take it, the British do not greatly 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 251 

esteem Jamaica. It has its most important trade 
relations with America, which takes about sixty 
per cent of its products, leaving less than thirty 
per cent in actuality to be swallowed by Britain after 
other traders have taken what they want. Americans 
have moved in and preempted the land — largely 
in the form of plantations devoted to the United 
Fruit Company. The British who used to come out 
to Jamaica for the winter have discovered that this 
Americanization has hit the hotels — the big ones 
naturally charge American prices; and as a result 
there is wailing because it costs so much to winter in 
the warmth. There is need of some cheaper hotels, 
and a few are springing up, even in the environs of 
Kingston, as one result of the close of the war. 

Calamitous visitations of quake and whirlwind 
have had their effect on the island. Port Royal, the 
original chief port — which lay at the end of the 
long sand spit which makes the huge harbor of mod- 
ern Kingston — was "swallowed up" in a quake in 
1692. In reality it only slid off into the sea, being 
built on a bit of sand which had stuck to the basic 
rocks, but which was dislodged when the earth 
began to heave. In 1712 and again in 1722 tornadoes 
swept the bulk of the Port Royal plantations flat 
and a great fire in 181 5 obliterated what was left of 
the former capital on the point. 



252 SAILING SOUTH 

The last great hurricane was in 1903, and the 
last big quake in 1907 — the one that destroyed 
Kingston and led to the unsavory interlude of the 
Sweatenham incident before referred to. Sweaten- 
ham was the royal governor. 

Immediately after the quake, being on a cruise in 
that vicinity and learning that there was trouble 
ashore, a gallant Yankee admiral with his squadron 
and a force of marines hurried into Kingston and 
sought to render first aid. Without waiting for any 
red tape he landed his marines, helped put out the 
fire which was raging, undertook to assist the local 
police, put down a rebellion among the prisoners in 
the penitentiary, and in various ways sought to be 
neighborly and helpful — assuming, of course, that 
the governor would be very glad to have assistance. 

The governor proved not to be grateful at all. 
His thanks took the form of an order to the admiral 
to take his marines out of the island forthwith and 
keep them out. He backed this with a letter, which 
I think for sheer studied insolence, beats anything I 
ever read in official correspondence. The people of 
Kingston protested and begged the admiral not to 
go. He said he simply could n't stay, after being 
ordered out by the authorities, and went. 

But the matter did not end there. It was brought 
to the attention of the British Foreign Office, which 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 253 

demanded an immediate explanation and apology 
from Sweatenham. He filed a perfunctory apology 
to Admiral Davis — and resigned. His resignation 
was accepted. He is still living in Jamaica — which 
must take rather a thick skin; but you will find 
opinion divided concerning him, and some, es- 
pecially of British allegiance, still insist that he was 
a much-maligned man. 

I met a lady who had been in Kingston on the 
fearful night of that earthquake. She and her father 
were staying at the old Myrtle Bank Hotel and were 
in their rooms. Without warning the floors began to 
heave and the walls suddenly fell outward. Those 
who remained in the hotel were saved, because the 
partitions and floors held fast. Those who ran into 
the street were killed by the crashing of the walls. 
My friend and her father managed to climb down 
over the debris; and the father, an old sea-captain 
with a sailor's natural instinct said at once that they 
must make for the water. They ran down to the 
edge of the harbor, found a boat, and pulled out on 
the bosom of the deep — "Because," explained the 
captain, "this town is going to burn!" It did burn. 
The fire and the quake together destroyed one 
thousand lives and $10,000,000 worth of property. 
Kingston still shows the scars. 

It was next day when the American admiral with 



254 SAILING SOUTH 

his marines arrived and plunged unbidden into the 
work of helping the afflicted. What they did was no 
doubt needful, and without them it would not have 
been done so promptly. But the governor and the 
more testy brand of British resident resented the 
possibility that these interlopers "would say they 
had saved a situation," and for that scruple they 
ordered them out with not so much as a thank-you, 
but with what looked much more like a churlish 
rebuff. I suppose Sweatenham is only waiting to see 
another quake and find out what happens next time! 
Jamaica sent over fifteen thousand men to the 
Great War. There are naturally also troops quar- 
tered in the island, although you see nothing of 
them. The white soldiers are stationed at an im- 
possible-looking town on the tip of a mountain 
which you can see from Kingston — a town which 
you can motor up to if your nerve is good, although 
those who have tried it usually say that they would 
not make the trip again for a million dollars. The 
climate up there is better for white men than that of 
the plains, and this probably compensates for the 
dangers of the jaunt. Besides, soldiers ought to be 
brave men, anyhow, and the journey up to New- 
castle is calculated to make any one brave if the 
tales are true. The negro troops live happily in a 
camp down below, which is quite easy of access. 



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS 255 

Katrlna, in her capacity of censor, says she thinks I 
have not been sufficiently enthusiastic about Kings- 
ton. I don't talk as if I wanted to go back there. 
Bless you, if that's the way it sounds I am sorry. 
All I mean to imply is that of all the places I saw in 
Jamaica, Kingston struck me as the least delightful, 
either for situation or for climate. But when you 
come to that, it is a matter of degrees of delight. All 
Jamaica is good, but some parts are better than 
others — to paraphrase the Kentuckian's verdict on 
whiskey of which you have heard. 



CHAPTER XVII 
A JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 

WHEN you are in Jamaica it is the thing to do 
what the Jamaicans don't do — to wit, hire a 
motor. The reason the Jamaicans do not do this is 
largely the expense. 

Gasoline at a dollar the gallon is not conducive to 
frequent joy-riding through the steep and curving 
grades of the mountain highways — which is a 
mercy. In fact you may drive all day and hardly 
meet two cars on the road. When you do, you will 
discover that although the rule is to "meet to the 
left and pass on the right," the drivers ordinarily 
hug the wrong side of the road and make both meet- 
ing and passing a source of abundant thrills. 

Tradition says you should not hire a local native 
for your driver, because when the local native does 
get behind a wheel and has some one else to pay for 
the gas he cuts loose and becomes a speed-hound. 
But as you prospect around for a car in which to 
tour the island you will speedily discover that none 
but local drivers of a dusky hue are to be had. You 
therefore insist upon being given a careful one — 
and you find that they are all (on their own tell) the 



A JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 257 

most careful drivers known to motordom. It is 
possible to make an arrangement with a genial per- 
son of Celtic extraction who operates a garage across 
the way from the Myrtle Bank Hotel, for any num- 
ber of days you choose, at a stipulated mileage rate, 
and including board for chauffeur, purchase of 
gasoline, etc., which is not on the whole ruinous. 
Which done, you await the day of departure, com- 
mending your soul to Heaven, and your estate to 
your heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns. 

I stipulated for a Buick, because I thought if 
anything happened to the driver I could manage 
to navigate the craft myself. It turned out that I 
did n't need to ; but you never can tell. The machine 
appeared in the porte cochere promptly at nine in the 
morning, as agreed; and barring a certain flavor 
of mild decay due to its early vintage it looked 
amply sufficient for Katrina and me. A nonchalant 
young man, of the cafe au lait complexion common in 
those parts, sat at the wheel — a soft-eyed, soft- 
spoken youth who said that I might, if I liked, call 
him Millard. I called him that for an hour or two. 
Thereafter he was referred to in the family circle as 
"Young Nuisance." He liked to drive, and he knew 
how to hand, reef, and steer passably — but not 
much more. His delight was in the open cut-out, 
and it was only by an occasional admonitory punch 



258 SAILING SOUTH 

in the back that I got him to close the muffler on 
level stretches or in going down hill. On the up- 
grade he opened her wide, and the snort of the ex- 
haust was to his ear as delectable as the music of the 
spheres. He insisted that this was necessary. 

He revealed also an artistic temperament in the 
use of the horn. On dangerous corners he omitted to 
sound it, apparently being more interested in getting 
around the curve. But on the open road where one 
could see ahead for a mile or two he waked the 
echoes of the glen with warning toots, until Katrina 
and I were reduced to something approaching an 
apoplectic rage. All these peculiarities we learned 
before we had made Spanish Town — a hamlet lying 
a dozen miles or less from the capital city. 

Spanish Town is notable chiefly for its narrow 
streets with their quaint houses, a huge penitentiary, 
and a very old church. The huddled houses appear 
to remind every American visitor of some town at 
home — all different. One lady told me it was like 
Williamsburg. To me it recalled Provincetown and 
Marblehead with a dash of Gloucester. As for the 
old cathedral, now of course Church-of-England, it 
was a delight. A moss-grown old negro showed us 
over it, explained the points of interest, pointed out 
the ancient tombs, accepted the customary gratuity, 
and bowed us out. The church was the first thing in 




OLD CATHEDRAL AT SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA 



A JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 259 

all Jamaica, aside from the everlasting hills, that had 
seemed at all permanent. 

Thence we proceeded many parasangs westward, 
passing on the way through Bushy Park where the 
dairy is, and pushed on toward the remote mountain 
hamlet of Mandeville. The road which had been 
dusty and rough began to improve. We crossed and 
recrossed the primitive railroad, rumbled through 
towns, quaintly named May Pen and Porus, and 
finally began to climb. The dust of Kingston was 
forgotten. The excessive heat of summer gave place 
to the balmy airs of jocund May. It had rained 
recently and the dust was washed from the wayside 
trees. Ever and anon stalwart negresses marched 
by, with that stately carriage acquired by the bear- 
ing of burdens on the head. Never have I seen more 
queenly figures than these wayside women — straight 
as arrows, sedate in movement, majestic in every 
way — often very handsome in the negroid style. 
From such as bore deckloads of fruit we bought 
sustenance for a song, which we shared with Young 
Nuisance ^ — i.e., bananas and star apples. The 
latter we prized chiefly for their decorative quality. 
As fruit, the star apple is n't much. If you cut it 
equatorially, you can see the inward star which gives 
it the name. If you cut it longitudinally you avoid 
trouble with the seeds. Its taste is sickish sweet, and 



26o SAILING SOUTH 

a gelatinous semi-fluid in its midst makes it other- 
wise than appetizing to the untutored. But the 
bananas and the tangerines, which you can get al- 
most anywhere as you ride along, are food for the 
gods in very truth. 

I soon learned by inquiry, what I had shrewdly 
suspected from the first, that Young Nuisance 
was n't a very experienced driver in the matter of 
insular geography. In common with most chauffeurs 
he lacked the so-called "bump of locality." Driving 
around Kingston was one thing, but a voyage of 
discovery to quarters sixty or one hundred miles 
remote was something else again. Young Nuisance 
was not much over sixteen. He claimed that he had 
been to Mandeville within living memory, but I 
noticed he had to inquire the road. Therefore, when 
I probed him and found that he had no conception 
of how to get from there to Moneague, where we 
proposed to spend the night, my heart took a trip to 
the bottom of my shoes. I did n't know the way 
myself, and it was a long ride at best through moun- 
tains many and great. Young Nuisance was sure of 
only one thing — and that was that it " could n't be 
done." 

Of course the right thing to do was to stay in 
Mandeville — which course was impossible only 
because there was no room for us in the inn. Owing 



JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 261 

to the American prices prevailing in Kingston, 
economical Britishers in great number had hied 
themselves to the hills from whence cometh low- 
priced and very admirable accommodation. Man- 
deville, which has three small hotels at reasonable 
rates and which boasts a most delightful climate of 
perpetual spring, was full to overflowing. We might 
lunch — but remain we could not. And Moneague lay 
seventy good miles away, through a devious country 
of which Young Nuisance was as ignorant as was L 
However, the very agreeable and very blond Eng- 
lishman who kept the Mandeville Hotel took a map 
and labored to show me the way. He said that if my 
driver was of reasonable intelligence — 

"Say no more," said I hastily. "He is n't." 
So he and I husked out the route together and 
I noted it on my cuff. Meanwhile Young Nuisance 
drove merrily away in quest of his food, disclaiming 
any need of procuring gas for the car. For this we 
had abundant reason to curse him later, because no 
one in Jamaica ever neglects a chance to refill his 
fuel tanks, if he be wise. There 's no certainty that 
you'll find any gas at the next town. It is very un- 
likely that you will. Therefore you buy whatever 
you can get as you go along, whether in real need of 
it or not. The time will come when you are glad you 
did it. 



262 SAILING SOUTH 

We lunched in great comfort at Mandeville, but 
not over-well. The hotel was a quaint, rambling 
affair, all ups and downs, with huge verandas on 
which all the bedrooms opened. I think I should en- 
joy staying there some day. The village itself was 
no less quaint, and spread itself over a little hollow 
in the midst of towering hills. A vast courthouse 
indicated that law and order were insisted upon. 
A decidedly knowing-looking hospital argued for 
the care of public health. But the great charm was 
of tropic nature all around — nature at its level 
best. 

Map in hand, and with copious notes under my 
eye as sailing master solely responsible for passengers 
and crew, we whirled away in the early afternoon. 
Millard was still pretty sure we should never make 
Moneague. He knew of the place, it seemed, but to 
his mind it lay at the antipodes and on a quite 
different road. Jockeying along through mountain 
ranges, always up and then ever down again, wast- 
ing precious gas on interminable stretches of low- 
gear, and apparently as far as ever from the goal, 
told on his perturbed spirit. The horn providen- 
tially gave out, owing to a broken wire. Even the 
cut-out lost its charm. We pounded painfully 
through a list of unknown and unknowable villages 
situated at vast intervals. It seemed that Katrina 



A JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 263 

really enjoyed the ride. She was n't on the bridge, 
so to speak, and her delight over the grandeur of 
mountain and verdure was perpetually ebullient. 
It was indeed magnificent, when one could give one's 
mind to it. The mountains of the island are both 
high and bold. They are wooded almost to their 
tops with tropic trees. The road winds in sweeping 
curves over spurs and down through cavernous 
vales. Everywhere was a smiling greenery, and 
overhead a blue sky — save where to my apprehen- 
sive view a gathering of cloud presaged another 
torrential shower for our later discomfiture. On 
the trees hung innumerable orchids. On no account 
go to Jamaica without doing the trip from Mande- 
ville northward to Brownstown, and thence onward 
to St. Ann, or to Moneague. It is worth the journey 
down to the island, if you do naught else. Even I, 
preoccupied with the work of pathfinding, could see 
the beauty of the ride. 

On the way you climb out of one watershed and 
into another. As that in turn proves profitless you 
climb once more and descend to a brawling river 
which gives a practicable route to the northern 
coast. Once we got over the second rise Young 
Nuisance brightened. "Here, sah! I been here befo*. 
Here's where I bought some gas!" I forget the 
name of the hamlet; but it was a beautiful spot, 



264 SAILING SOUTH 

notable for much else besides the fact that here 
on some previous occasion Millard had refilled his 
depleted tanks. He lost all consciousness of the road 
again shortly after, but by dint of keeping in the 
way directed we made Brownstown late in the after- 
noon and made diligent inquiry as to directions 
thence. They said it was all right. Just keep on 
going. Millard, who was beginning to appreciate 
the gas problem, inquired also for fuel. They said 
there was n't any in town. Oh, well! who cared? 

We knew too much to ask for the road to Mon- 
eague. You might as well inquire the road to Baby- 
lon, or Tewksbury. The native knows the name of 
the next town, perhaps, but beyond that he has n't 
usually heard. However, the Blond Man of Mande- 
ville had given me a choice list of odd burgs along 
the way, including such peculiar spots as Excellent 
Town and Good Design. We whirled away around 
a corner and into more mountains, just as the rain 
which had hung off all the afternoon began to fall. 

I think even Katrina was depressed by now. The 
road did n't look as if it could be the right one. It 
had ribbons of grass down its midst and certainly 
did n't look like a main highway. Eventually we got 
up into the clouds and wandered along interminably 
on a shelf of the mountain. A young donkey got 
ahead of us and ran as fast as he could go, unable 



A JAMAICAN MOTOR FLIGHT 265 

to find any breach in the wall of green along the 
roadside through which to escape. But in an hour 
or so we came to a tiny collection of houses — a vil- 
lage of sorts — and inquired of the local grocery, 
"licensed to sell brandy, gin, and agricultural im- 
plements," what place this might be. 

"Dis here town, sah, am Bamboo." 

Ah, good! We were all right after all. 

"This the way to Claremont?" 

"Yassah. Claremont eight mile, Moneague thir- 
teen!" 

Now that was something like ! Katrina and I be- 
came gay again. So also did Young Nuisance — 
who had repaired his horn and woke the echoes 
afresh. The rain ceased. The waning sun cast a 
benediction over a washed and wakened nature. So 
on we sped through hills of an ever-increasing stu- 
pendousness, racing against the advancing dusk. 
At last it was down, down, down, and then around a 
long curve toward a hillock, set like the boss of an 
inverted shield, the top of which was crowned with 
our desired haven. It was the Moneague Hotel ; and 
the proprietor announced that he was expecting us. 
Our good friend in Kingston, Mr. K., had been as 
good as his word. He had telegraphed, and we were 
safe. 

Young Nuisance proclaimed that he had half a 



266 SAILING SOUTH 

tank left. He said he would surely refill it during the 
night. 

I had at Moneague my first real night's sleep since 
reaching the tropics. It was deathly still up there. 
No roosters woke the midnight. No quarreling 
natives disturbed the early dawn. It was even cold 
enough for one blanket. Twelve hours was my 
record that night; and the cares that had infested 
the day did the proper and traditional thing. They 
folded their tents like the Arabs and silently stole 
away. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE NORTH COAST 

YOUNG NUISANCE, otherwise Millard, pre- 
sented himself on the following morning — a 
fine dewy morning in March, at the portals of the 
Hotel Moneague. 

He regretted to report one flat tire, which he en- 
gaged to repair in the course of an hour. Also he 
regretted to state that there was no gasoline to be 
had in that upland resort. He insisted, however, 
that there was still enough fuel in the tanks to get 
us to the town of St. Ann's Bay, at which point he 
was positive we could refill. 

I was still new in Jamaica, and believed. 

Therefore we sat down to contemplate the un- 
dulations of a near-by mountain range. A bright 
forenoon sun dispelled the coolness of the mountain 
morning. There could be no need of haste, for St. 
Ann lay only about twenty miles away — and that 
distance, especially when it is nearly all downhill, 
requires but little time and little "gas." In fact it is 
more a matter of brake-linings than anything else, 
and less a problem of locomotion than of holding 
back. 



268 SAILING SOUTH 

I would say a good word for Moneague in passing. 
I suspect that there is a town of that name, although 
I have not seen it. There is certainly a very eligible, 
if somewhat primitive, hostelry remote from the 
actual village on the top of a low and conical hill, 
where they "do you very well" as the British mis- 
leadingly put it, at a very moderate charge. If you 
ever go to Jamaica and get tired — as you will — of 
the heat and dust of Kingston, get thee to Moneague 
and there abide! You will find it pleasantly warm 
by day and deliciously cool o' nights. You will be 
simply but sufficiently fed. You will not be rained 
upon overmuch. You will be within, say, fifteen 
miles of the northern coasts, which can be reached by 
a most charming road. And you can take a run down 
there to bathe and come back easily for lunch. 
There is no railroad within a dozen miles. 

Young Nuisance came to time as per agreement in 
due course, and after preliminary inquiries designed 
to eke out his infantile ignorance of local geography, 
we took the road — coasting gently down a series of 
sweeping curves and mounting swiftly an adjacent 
ridge — from whence the descent, like that to Aver- 
nus, was said to be facile. It was even so. As we 
drew near the coast the road took a headlong plunge 
of three miles or thereabouts, down and ever down- 
ward, through caverns seemingly, measureless to 



THE NORTH COAST 269 

man, the sides of which were covered with ferns of 
most stupendous size and endless variety. Not the 
least interesting of Jamaican flora are the varieties 
of fern. They embrace innumerable species. Your 
driver, whatever else he may not know, is anxious 
to show you his knowledge of such things as these. 

"See, Missy! Silver fern! Wait! I get him for 
yo'." And forthwith he jams on his emergency 
brake, vanishes over the side, and disappears in the 
undergrowth. Shortly he emerges with a few fern 
leaves, which you lay on the back of your hand and 
then administer a smart blow. Behold! An exact 
reproduction of every frond remains outlined in 
silver on your sunburned flesh. Or maybe in gold, if 
it 's a gold fern. And as for sensitive plant — what 
they call locally "'Shamed of you" ■ — it is every- 
where. Touch it and it shivers and shrivels into it- 
self, for all the world as if alive and very much 
frightened, thus to remain for about ten minutes 
by the watch. Then it plucks up heart and opens 
again. 

The drive down to the sea, at a place still bearing 
the name of Ochos Rios (Eight Rivers) for some 
reason which we did not discover, is known some- 
what unpoetically as the "Fern Gully Ride." I 
never fancied the word "gully." To me, it means a 
bleak and stony ravine, quite different from this 



270 SAILING SOUTH 

opulent fern-clad abyss, from the bottom of which we 
could hardly see the sun. 

We ground our way down through the verdant 
gloom of that cleft in the primordial rocks, pausing 
prudently after a time to let the brakes cool suf- 
ficiently to save them, and always exclaiming at 
the beauty of the environment, which was notable 
alike for its ferns, its depth of shadow, and its 
precipitous walls which vanished somewhere above 
into an unguessed heaven of tropical trees. 

Then almost without warning we emerged from 
the gulf of ferns, and lo, there was the sea beating 
in long, regular rollers on the palm-clad beach. A 
brawling stream, doubtless one of the eight, dashed 
out of the jungle and with one exulting, joyous 
bound leaped into the arms of Ocean. East and 
west under the palms stretched the white road that 
circles the island. Inland, the cliffs rose boldly. 

You will be enchanted with the view, if you go 
thither, and especially with the confiding way in 
which the palm-trees come right down to the 
water's edge, like unto the trees of Chargogagog- 
manchaugagogchaubunagungamaug. They act as 
if it was n't the ocean at all, but a river. And yet 
there come occasional breakers that dash a salty 
foam clear over the road. 

We turned westward, questing St. Ann. On so 



THE NORTH COAST 271 

bold a shore the highway winds and winds, always 
close to the water, but traversing deep coves and 
making out to the very end of narrow capes. Mil- 
lard revealed a propensity to speed and had to be 
admonished by Katrina, whose sunshade played a 
gentle tattoo on his youthful shoulders. You see 
you might meet another car on those narrow curves 

— or more likely a big truck loaded with the omni- 
present banana — or more probably still, the na- 
tive cart, dawdling on the wrong side of the way, 
may greet you as you whirl into the midst of a 
squawking and panicky populace. Native drivers 
have to be firmly and persistently quelled — and at 
this form of pastime we have learned to be most 
expert. Even then you have solved only half the 
problem — for it is of little avail to be careful your- 
self if the other fellow happens not to be careful too, 
and those roads are fearsomely crooked and terribly 
strait and narrow. 

Dun's River — sometimes called Dungeon River 

— pours likewise out of a depth of jungle, roars 
under the road, and then drops a sheer thirty feet 
to a pleasantly shaded beach. Here is the bather's 
paradise, if you don't mind dressing and undressing 
for the plunge in a somewhat inadequate shelter of 
banana-leaved huts. They say it is most glorious 
to wash in the warm sea and then rinse off under 



272 SAILING SOUTH 

the cool natural shower bath of the falls. But the 
fall of Dun's River is a small affair contrasted with 
a cascade a mile or two farther on, where the great- 
est of all the island cataracts is to be seen at a small 
expenditure of time. Millard was n't going to let 
us see that one — being impressed unduly by the 
fact that for the privilege of turning aside into a 
private road the guardian holds you up for a shilling 
apiece. It is worth the fee, however, so do not miss 
it. You drive for a short distance on the private 
way through a dense growth, toward a point where 
can be heard the voice of many waters. Then you 
descend and make your way on foot to the base of a 
really stupendous cascade which comes thundering 
out of the mountains and dashing and splashing, 
and whirling and swirling, and lunging and plung- 
ing — you know how the water comes down at 
Lodore? Well, it does that same way here. If 
Katrina, with her zeal for sight-seeing and her pro- 
pensity for keeping one eye on the guide-books, 
had not insisted, I am afraid we should have been 
whisked past Roaring River Fall and landed unduly 
early in St. Ann. As it was we parked the dis- 
gruntled Millard under a cocoanut-palm and clam- 
bered over the rocks to the base of this miniature 
Niagara, comparing it not unfavorably with the 
Falls of Montmorency just below Quebec. 



THE NORTH COAST 273 

After which, being seated, we allowed Young 
Nuisance to conduct us at full speed to St. Ann — 
drawing up with a grand flourish, such as stage- 
drivers love the world over, before the hospitable 
stairways that lead up to the Hotel Osborne. It 
was the hour sacred to lunch, and the gasoline had, 
indeed, endured to get us there — but not much 
more. Millard drove away in hopeful quest of some : 
we to a shaded veranda and to the prospect of a 
lazy afternoon, in which a view over white roofs to 
a sea of most incredible blues figured as the chief 
excitement. 

Apart from the fact that there's nothing what- 
ever to do at St. Ann, it *s a delightful place in which 
to be. The town is not large, but it is neat. It lies 
on a slope just above the bay, which latter is pro- 
tected to east and west by jutting headlands. It is 
a tiny harbor suitable only for small boats. The 
bathing would be excellent if there were any facili- 
ties — but there are none. The popular pastime 
at St. Ann is that celebrated by the poet. Whitman, 
of loafing and inviting your soul. One addicted 
to eating the lotus must find it a delightful spot. 
You simply sit in the shade and watch indolent 
negresses puffing by with their burdens on their 
heads and a stubby clay pipe of obvious antiquity 
held between ivory teeth. The native women, of 



274 SAILING SOUTH 

course, are inveterate smokers and are by no means 
confined to pipes. A black cigar is not infrequently 
preferred — and while I think of it, the Jamaica 
cigars are very far from being half bad. They are 
not expensive, but are very tolerable in quality 
without approaching the incomparable product of 
Cuba. Jamaica seems never to have made any 
effort to boom the tobacco trade, being more alive 
to the virtues of bananas and cocoanuts. The 
citrus fruits suffer a partial neglect, also, when in- 
dustry might easily make of the Jamaica tangerine 
with its ill-fitting coat a coveted luxury beyond 
seas. On the whole it seems to me an island of 
neglected opportunities — now partly recognized 
by the United Fruit people, but still numerously 
available for further exploitation. 

The Osborne House, kept by an industrious 
woman with sundry masculine assistants, turned 
out to be immaculately clean and tidy. It was also 
evidently popular. Owing to the lack of local 
amusements its trade is naturally transient, apart 
from sundry English guests who hie themselves 
thither chiefly because it is both a quiet spot and a 
reasonable. It was for the moment enlivened, aside 
from our humble selves, by a strolling troupe of 
movie photographers in quest of "nature studies'* 
for an "educational" film corporation in the 



THE NORTH COAST 275 

States. These gentry, after a wild time in getting 
across from Cuba by an unfrequented line, found 
life admittedly dull. There is small excitement in 
taking moving pictures of tropical trees after you 
have been filming scenarios for Douglas Fairbanks, 
Ethel Barrymore, Nazimova, et id om. 

The evening's conversation turned on the idio- 
syncrasies and peculiarities of movie stars, their 
fabulous salaries, their probable length of days as 
public favorites, and so on. Mary Pickford's an- 
nual income was casually estimated at "about two 
million — but what does that get her? The Govern- 
ment takes 'most all of it!" 

The movie troupe was a unit in expressing its 
admiration for that national institution, the plant- 
ers' punch; but apart from that it preferred New 
York and Los Angeles for steady diet. It was 
bound hence for Montego Bay. 

"Have you any gasoline?" I inquired. 

"No — not very much. But we'll take a chance. 
If we get stuck we'll just camp out and register 
'hope,' I guess. The Lord will provide." 

I suspect that must be what they did, for I found 
after lunch how serious was the gasoline question. 
There was a local famine. Young Nuisance came 
back to the hotel with a very long face, announcing 
that not one drop was to be had for any consider- 



276 SAILING SOUTH 

ation in the purlieus of St. Ann. He had only a 
gallon or so remaining, and our next jump was one 
of seventy-five miles. What was he to do? 

I said I did n't know. In short, it was n't up to 
me — but all the time I knew it was. 

Inquiry developed the fact that the nearest rail- 
way station was Ewarton, some thirty miles away 
in the interior. If worst came to worst we could 
hire a wagon to drive us there and leave Young 
Nuisance to starve in the midst of plenty. I was 
minded to do this. 

Then we thought of the United Fruit, that fairy 
godmother; so we squandered a half-gill of the 
precious fluid on a drive to the docks where stood 
the local office. Yes, they had gasoline — but only 
a little. They were n't allowed to sell it, even to 
themselves. It was for trucks, and so forth. At 
this point I produced credentials from the remote 
potentates of the company. The effect was magi- 
cal. They would telephone Kingston and see if I 
might be supplied by special permit. 

In the course of the afternoon a dusky messenger 
brought me a typewritten message which read like 
the eleventh-hour reprieve of the condemned. "Mr. 
M. can have gasoline to take him to Port Antonio 
or to any other part of the island. (Signed) K." 
We were saved ! 



THE NORTH COAST 277 

It was here that I learned the important differ- 
ence between a British and American gallon. Ours 
is smaller. But whichever it was, we filled the tank 
as full as it would go, paid the fee which was by 
no means inconsiderable, and offered humble and 
hearty thanks for the chance to do it. Thence back 
to the hotel to listen to a painstaking child in the 
next block practicing five-finger exercises and al- 
ways ending with "The Happy Farmer," in the 
production of which masterpiece she made the 
same mistakes on each repetition. 

Walking about the streets of St. Ann's Bay we 
came across many a friendly person of color, chiefly 
in the way of affable and solicitous mammies pulling 
on their T.D.'s and anxious to show their interest in 
the stranger within their gates. 

"Good-mawnin', Mistress Missus!" 

* ' Good-morning ! ' ' 

"How is yo' health, Mistress Missus!" 

"Very fair, thank you. And you?" 

"Fine, Mistress Missus! An' how is yo' health, 
Massa?" 

Such soft and melodious voices — and yet I can- 
not recall that I often heard singing. Perhaps be- 
cause the Church of England does not encourage 
the singing of what we call "negro spirituals," or 
because the plantation ditty is an American product 



278 SAILING SOUTH 

exclusively, the Jamaican darky seems not to be- 
guile his days with song. You do meet now and 
then a dusky troubadour on the road with his gui- 
tar — but you will be lucky if in addition to hear- 
ing him strum upon it you also hear him lift his 
voice. I heard negro chanteys when we were rafting 
on the river — but that is another story. 



A 



CHAPTER XIX 

PORT ANTONIO 

LONG the northern coast of Jamaica, bending 
in and out with the indentations of the shore, 
runs a reasonably level and very excellent road 
connecting St. Ann's Bay with the eastern town of 
Port Antonio. To be sure, it is a narrow highway 
and very far from straight, so that one driving over 
it is in constant need of what the law school pro- 
fessors used to call "the degree of care which an 
ordinarily prudent man would exercise in the cir- 
cumstances"; but it is a delightful journey to make 
in any case. 

St. Ann has little to hold you long, as I believe I 
have remarked once before, aside from its pleasant 
situation and its very admirable little inn. Port 
Antonio, on the contrary, has allurements that 
might easily hold you forever. I am coming to that. 

Plentifully supplied with petrol, Millard, our 
juvenile charioteer, was once more restored to the 
buoyant spirits consistent with his meager years 
and was promptly at the door on the morning of 
our departure. The day was fine, the Caribbean 
smiled, and the early northeast trade blew as gently 



280 SAILING SOUTH 

as a western zephyr in our faces as we took the 
road. It was a day to mark in the memory with a 
very white stone. The showers of the day before 
had laid the dust, and had washed from the way- 
side shrubs that coating of white which in most 
Jamaican highways somewhat dims the tropic 
splendors, save in seasons of heavy rain. 

For many a mile the way led close to the beach — 
a beach broken by repeated low capes and forever 
lined with palms. To the landward side the cliffs 
rose steeply, rock below and riotous verdure above. 
We proceeded at a conservative pace past myriad 
coves where gushing rivers from the hills leaped 
from the low rocks into the sea. The multitudes of 
the countryside were coming in town to market, 
some in carts and some afoot with loads of fruit 
perched jauntily on their heads. To each and all 
we paid the passing tribute of a toot — for not 
only did Millard love his raucous horn; the natives 
also demanded this notice as an indication of their 
recognized presence. 

I have discovered that although a Jamaican 
darky sees you coming and knows that you see him, 
he is none the less anxious to have you toot at him. 
If you do not, it seems to be felt to be a species of 
insult — or at best a gross social error. 

" Whuff o' you not blow yo' hawn at me, Mars 



PORT ANTONIO 281 

Josh?" indignantly inquired a Port Antonio dame 
of my good friend B. one day. "Doan' I see you, 
an' doan' you see me? Whuff o' you not blow yo' 
hawn?" 

Therefore Millard, mindful of insular etiquette, 
blew painstakingly on the open road at all and 
sundry — but swept silently around the narrow 
curves to the imminent danger of such as might be 
approaching unseen. Evidently our siren was not 
regarded by him as a warning signal, but as a sort 
of saluting apparatus, or stertorous equivalent to 
raising the hat. 

Once we dashed around a corner full upon a 
truck loading bananas and were forced to an 
emergency stop as the better part of valor — since 
a five-year-old touring car is no match for a full- 
fledged army truck piled high with green fruit. 
Then, and then only, was the stolid calm of Millard 
broken. He leaned as haughtily as his sixteen years 
would allow from his seat and shouted, "Hey! Dis 
a fine place for you to be loadin' de banan'! My 
Gawd!" The truck crew grinned an ivory grin, 
obligingly pulled ahead half a length — and we 
were off once more in a whirl of mingled dust and 
gasoline. 

One coast ride in Jamaica is as like unto another 
as one hand is to another hand. That is, although 



282 SAILING SOUTH 

all different, they tend to a certain uniformity of 
general feature. We began to pass through other 
minor northern ports, some redolent of the ancient 
Spanish days and others with more stupid British 
names, which, if traced, would probably turn out to 
be corruptions of the ancient Spanish. Then the 
highway left the sea and crossed a spur of mountain, 
only to descend to the water again at Annotta Bay, 
meeting there the railroad which had climbed over 
the main ridge between us and the Kingston side. 
Thence we proceeded many a level mile close to the 
ocean's marge, now and then sprayed by the break- 
ers from the beach as the day's breeze increased in 
strength and piled the long rollers more and more 
vehemently on the yellow sands. 

At last, well after noon, we coasted down a long 
hill and found before us the considerable town of 
Port Antonio, almost at the northeast corner of the 
island, with the long and curiously dark bulk of the 
famous Titchfield Hotel stretching itself along the 
top of the jutting spur of land that here makes out 
into the sea between twin harbors. A whisk through 
narrow streets, a mad dash up another slope, and 
we had arrived. 

I find myself reluctant to undertake any descrip- 
tion of Port Antonio, because it makes such a 
heavy demand upon the powers of expression. I 



^ 


« 






IV 


L^ 



OLD CHURCH, ANNOTTA BAY, JAMAICA 



PORT ANTONIO 283 

have seen many a beautiful spot on this green earth, 
but seldom if ever have I seen one so beautiful, or 
so rare a combination of sea, sky, and summit. I 
can imagine nothing more soul-satisfying than the 
entrance by ship into the harbors of Port Antonio 
on a cloudless morning, when the wind is asleep 
and when the lofty mountains behind the city are 
free from cloud. It is a thousand pities that the 
exigencies of commerce have led to the abandon- 
ment of this as a port of call for the regular 
passenger ships of the United Fruit; for It is sure 
that such an arrangement as used to obtain would 
enhance the seductiveness of travel to Jamaica. 
Nevertheless It Is only the special cruisers and the 
way- freighters that come in there now. The regular 
lines all go around to Kingston and leave you to 
find out Port Antonio by land. 

The town Itself is rather unattractive — not very 
large, almost entirely negroid, but situated in a 
setting that would redeem a hamlet far less ornate 
than this one actually is. OfT to one side stands a 
venerable stone church on a little knoll. All around 
rise abrupt, conical hills, possibly five or six hundred 
feet In height, cultivated to their summits and 
usually crowned with villas that seem Impossible 
of approach. Behind them tower the seven thou- 
sand feet of the old Blue Mountain. It Is the para- 



284 SAILING SOUTH 

dise of tourists, and it has proved to be the popular 
spot for those who, wearying of bleak northern 
winters, have located in Jamaica their palaces of 
ease. The climate is without a peer — not too hot 
by day, not too chilly by night, not too dry, and not 
too moist. The trade wind blows steadily at noon- 
day. The mountain breeze walketh in the darkness. 
There is always a cool spot at midday somewhere 
around the house. Golf links, not two miles away, 
afford a chance for exercise to such as rise early 
enough to escape the noontide sun, or such as brave 
the torridity of late afternoon. Tennis in the shade 
of the hotel is always available. And out on a shoal 
in the western bay lies a remote bath-house where 
swimming is an unmixed delight. 

There are twin harbors, separated from one an- 
other by a narrow and lofty promontory on which 
is set the great bulk of the Hotel Titchfield. From 
this commodious hostelry the land slopes sharply 
on either hand, through terraced gardens, to the 
sea — a sea protected on either side by yet other 
capes. The harbor entrances are narrow, but deep, 
and remind one of the dramatic approaches to 
Havana in Cuba and to San Juan in Porto Rico. 
Either bay is suitable for ships of deep draught ; but 
at present the eastern one is affected only by the great 
white-and-gold cruisers that drop in week after week 



PORT ANTONIO 285 

to land their sight-seeing parties. The western bay, 
with its equally narrow channel and its greater 
plenitude of docks, is the busier of the two — with 
freighters coming and going daily. You sit on the 
hotel veranda and see them slipping in and out. 
You learn the whistle code and know which are 
United Fruit boats and which other lines. 

And all the while the breeze blows softly but 
steadily from the water, through arbors, through 
roses, through flowering trees. A fountain plashes 
pleasantly in the garden toward the north. A rag- 
bag of a Hindu ministers to the fragrant blooms 
tirelessly through the day. Why do anything? Why 
not remain here forever? And yet, curiously enough, 
the Titchfield is open only a few months of the win- 
ter, and then lies idle the rest of the year, while 
the Myrtle Bank, over in stifling Kingston, runs 
the year round. The United Fruit, which runs both 
hotels, has at times even talked of abandoning 
the Titchfield altogether — an incredible thing to 
do. This terrestrial paradise ought to be perfectly 
flooded with holiday-makers, from autumn to June. 
All it needs is to be pushed. No one who ever went 
thither could be aught but a determined advertiser 
of Port Antonio. It is the veritable Garden of the 
Lord. 

At eleven in the forenoon and again at four in the 



286 SAILING SOUTH 

afternoon, a tiny launch goes out to the bath-house 
on the shoal. The water close to the hotel is sixty 
feet deep, or thereabouts; but at the bath-house, a 
mile away out in the midst of the harbor, it is only 
from five feet to about ankle-deep, according to 
where you stand. You alight at the house, change 
your clothing in one of the little cells allotted to you, 
and then disport at ease in water that differs from 
the air only in being wet and salty. I have no doubt 
you could remain in it all day. Of course everybody 
bathes, and many get themselves rowed out to the 
shoal at odd hours, preferring it to the rapid launch 
trip in a crowd. 

But for the most part you simply sit in the cool of 
the deep verandas, now here, now there, as suits the 
breeze, reading, smoking, having tea — or some- 
thing else — talking, watching the ships, admiring 
the dancers of an evening; in short, thoroughly 
enjoying life. Tropic heat mitigated by a cool- 
ing wind, odorous gardens, waving palms, terraces 
smiling in the sun — such is Port Antonio, an 
earthly replica of the Persian's heaven. For what 
says the poet — 

"A Persian's heaven is easily made; 
It is dark eyes and lemonade!" 

I am, as Katrina sometimes reminds me, of a 




VIEW FROM PORCH OF TITCHFIELD HOTEL, PORT ANTONIO 



PORT ANTONIO 287 

sedentary habit. I could linger in such a spot as 
Port Antonio forever and a day. I should need 
hardly stir from the hotel. And yet now and then 
you do stir. You go "downtown" shopping — al- 
though there's little enough to buy, save baskets 
and the cloth for your summer suit. You can make 
various excursions along the shore. You can ride 
over to Blue Hole — which is a cavernous cove in 
the north shore about eight miles to the eastward, 
where they say (and I believe it) that the depth of 
the water is three hundred feet or more. The name, 
of course, comes from the exceptional blueness of the 
sea here — blue even for this clime, where the sea is 
never anything but a gorgeously unbelievable ul- 
tramarine. You drive thither over a splendid road 
lined by plantations in which the omnipresent ba- 
nana and the useful cocoanut figure predominantly. 
I spoke a little while ago of the heathen Hindu 
who attends the Titchfield gardens. He is one of a 
numerous race, for Hindu importations to Jamaica 
in past years have been heavy, although the immi- 
gration is now cut off. As I understand it, these were 
brought over as a sort of contract labor, heavily in- 
dentured to employers for work in the fields. It 
wasn't slavery, of course; and yet it savored so 
strongly of servitude that a reaction appears to have 
set in and the planters are somewhat embarrassed in 



288 SAILING SOUTH 

consequence to obtain adequate supplies of toilers. 
No Hindus are coming over now, but the multitude 
who came in the past seem especially plentiful along 
the northern side of the island. Dusky of color, they 
might be confused with the negroes of African 
descent were it not for their predilection for massive 
jewelry around the neck or in the ears, or occasionally 
in the nose, and for their conviction that it is un- 
worthy to wear trousers. The Hindu swathes his 
legs in swaddling bands, usually of a ragged nature; 
and while he exceeds the "piece of twisty rag " which 
Gunga Din affected as his principal uniform, it is 
much of a muchness therewith. The Jamaica darky, 
on the contrary, has no caste prejudices. He wears 
our kind of clothes — and gorgeous ones, of course, 
after his peculiar taste in which a note of bright blue 
is conspicuous. 

I have no doubt the Hindus keep themselves more 
or less to themselves, being clannish and bound by 
curious ideas of religion. The ordinary darky is 
gregarious, however, and he is a most affable soul. 
Like our own Southern negro, he loves long words, 
resounding names, and is strongly religious in his 
own way. 

Naturally he speaks English; but It is dialect 
English. When he is conversing with a fellow-negro 
you will scarcely understand one word in a dozen. 



PORT ANTONIO 289 

When you speak to him he always pretends to under- 
stand — but if you would be safe, do not rest con- 
tent with his " yassah." Just ask him to repeat what 
you said. Ten to one he cannot — and then you go 
over it all again. He usually says "yassah" because 
that is politely agreeable and saves trouble. 

Families in Jamaica are enormous. There is n't 
the faintest semblance of anything that can be mis- 
taken for race suicide. The wayside hamlets are 
full of pickaninnies. There appears to be a fondness 
on the part of Jamaica mothers for resounding 
names. "Amanilla," or some such fanciful device, 
is apt to be attached to females of the species, and 
it gets to be monotonous. They relate that once, 
when a negro girl baby was brought before one 
Bishop Enos to be baptized under the name of 
" Amanilla" he remonstrated that the name was too 
common and urged the substitution of something 
different. Whereupon the devout parents announced 
that the girl should be named for Bishop Enos him- 
self — and they called her name "Shenos!" 

Now that I pause to re-read what has been written 
I am impressed with the utter inadequacy of it to 
give any idea of the beauties of Port Antonio. I 
must give it up, then, and urge that you make trial 
of it for yourself, if you would fain know one of the 
loveliest spots on earth. The half has not been told 



290 SAILING SOUTH 

you — nor the tithe. Why in the world any one, who 
is not absolutely compelled, should remain in our 
unspeakable winter climate when such joyous places 
as Port Antonio are accessible without impoverish- 
ment, it is difficult to understand. To know Port 
Antonio is to love it. To have been there is to go 
there again and again. Here is summer, without 
summer's rigor. Here is beauty to be enjoyed with- 
out effort. What more can you ask? Would you 
tire of it? Hardly — but if you did, you could go 
to the hills. And when you had gone thither you 
would find yourself sighing for those deep gardens, 
those airy verandas, that unutterably blue and 
smiling sea. 

It must be healthful, too. Now that I think of it 
I do not recall that once in all our journeying to and 
fro among the parishes of the island did I meet a 
single funeral — and in Porto Rico, a year ago, I 
was forever taking off my hat in silent honor to the 
passing caskets of the poor. No doubt men die in 
Jamaica — and when they die it must indeed be 
hard to reconcile one's self to go, leaving as one does 
an earthly paradise. Fortunate, indeed, then, that 
we are promised even greater glories in that which is 
to come! 



CHAPTER XX 
RAFTING IN JAMAICA 

JAMAICA, the "Isle of Springs," has numerous 
brawling rivers, never of great magnitude and 
usually swift because of the abrupt declivities of 
the courses which they run. Moreover, they have 
the disconcerting habit which has been spoken of 
hitherto of disappearing altogether without warning, 
only to emerge with undiminished volume some- 
where else, the intervening passage being subter- 
raneous. 

None, I believe, is navigable save by rafting; 
but the rafting such as one may enjoy on the Rio 
Grande near Port Antonio, or on the Rio Cobre near 
Kingston (beginning at Bog Walk), affords such 
a pleasant experience that I have been saving it for 
my closing chapter on winter vacation doings in 
lands to the southward. 

The tremors which one experiences in such a case 
are purely anticipatory. There is, in fact, nothing 
about the journey which need cause alarm — and 
yet the bare mention of shooting rapids is usually ter- 
rifying and suffices to keep you in a twitter through 
several days during which you procrastinate and 



293 SAILING SOUTH 

postpone. But when you finally announce at the 
hotel office that your resolution is at last fixed to go 
a-rafting, the hotel authorities assure you that you 
ought to buy a raft ticket at the office — of them. 
You really do not need to, but it does no harm. Like- 
wise no good. You buy it, therefore, at a stipulated 
tariff in the fond belief that this exempts you from 
native profiteering at the river — only to discover 
that your raftsman, an adept at playing on the ten- 
der emotions, draws such a doleful picture of his 
hard financial condition as the result of your having 
bought your ticket (they call it a "horder") in town 
that you cheerfully disburse thrice the fee by way of 
largess when you part from him ! I mention this now 
merely because it occurs to me. It does n't belong 
here, but much farther on in my experiences with 
the Black Pearl of all rivermen, hight Charles 
Roberts. 

In order to make this excursion you will need first 
of all a carriage — which suffices to convey you to 
the headwaters of the river at a point some five or 
six miles from town, and which, after abandoning 
you to the tender mercies of the river drivers, pro- 
ceeds empty to another point some five miles below, 
there to pick you up on landing. Meantime you 
are to sail down a river of surpassing beauty for the 
space of something more than an hour, now through 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 293 

placid reaches over gleaming sands, now down roar- 
ing rapids over pebbles and boulders innumerable. 
I have no hesitation in affirming that of all our ex- 
periences in Jamaica, this was the most thoroughly 
delightful in every possible way, from the time we 
embarked until the time we stepped ashore. On no 
account whatever is it to be missed. 

Wisdom dictates making the journey in the fore- 
noon, before the sun gets in his deadly work for the 
day. It is well to leave the Titchfield by eight o'clock, 
if you can bring yourself to rise so early. At that 
hour the morning is still freshly cool, and as your 
horses trot nimbly out of the town and up into the 
adjacent hills you will meet the inflowing tide of 
market traffic, chiefly afoot — native women toting 
on their heads just enough of the produce of their 
meager plantations to win them another day's 
gains. It is a mixed population, largely Hindu and 
partly plain negro, the Hindu women gorgeous in 
their heavy bracelets and necklaces. The driver 
will, as usual, purvey information as to wayside 
trees and fruits — generally telling you that it 
is n't the right season to sample the latter. I have 
discovered that in the matter of mangoes, breadfruit, 
custard apples, and so on, man never is, but always 
to be blest. Next month they will be ripe — not 
now. Still, if you are lucky enough to win the favor 



294 SAILING SOUTH 

of some local expert, he or she can generally find you 
a mango that is prematurely ripe to try — and you 
will find it pleasantly acrid, with a suggestion of the 
taste of the arborvitae leaf, and juicy to a charm. 

It is a long climb to the point where the rafts are 
to be had. The little horses tug manfully up the long 
grades, and the villages passed are few. But even- 
tually you come to a tiny hamlet, bearing the attrac- 
tive name of Fellowship, whence a ruder side road 
branches off into the highlands ; and over this, now 
up and now down, you make a steady progress 
toward your goal. Very likely an industrious 
youngster meets you — a crafty raftsman, anxious 
to be forehanded with possible fares. He has 
walked out two weary miles from the landing and 
now he trots eagerly back beside the carriage, ex- 
torting repeated promises of patronage. You will 
discover on reaching the place of general assembly 
that all his toil is vain. For, you see, you have a 
ticket, and that puts you under the protection of 
the master of the boatmen. He waves aside the 
eager lad who has tagged you in. It seems that this 
lad is a first-grade pilot — but it is n't his turn and 
he must n't presume on the others. Wherefore you 
feel sorry for his fruitless race and secretly pay him a 
shilling or two — which is really all he expected, 
anyhow. Then he goes back and does the same thing 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 295 

over again, thus earning a day's wages without once 
taking to the river. 

That was what happened, at all events, to us. We 
found the landing-place alive with men and boys, as 
thick as hasty pudding. Exercising authority over 
them was a local centurion, a canny Scot with a 
gentle manner and soft voice, respected by his 
subordinates and obviously accepted by them as 
strictly just. There was no squabbling over our 
allotment, even when the swarthy youth who had 
claimed us on the way in was firmly but gently 
denied. MacDonald, or whatever his name was, 
destined us to the tender care of Charles Roberts — 
and all the clamoring host fell away as if by magic. 
Charles, bare of foot and evidently a charter mem- 
ber of the overalls club, stepped forward and waved 
us toward the water. The chief said he was a good 
pilot — one of the best. But of course he would say 
that. 

Charles Roberts drew in his craft, and I must 
admit that it did not look to my untutored eye to 
be altogether seaworthy. It was made of bamboo 
poles, perhaps eight of them, twenty-five feet long 
and of fair girth, lashed together at either end and 
also at intervals down the middle. When Charles 
stepped aboard the poles submerged slightly and 
water flowed agreeably over the entire length of the 



296 SAILING SOUTH 

ship. Aft, laid crosswise, were other bamboo logs 
and on top of these yet other poles making a sort of 
raised dais, on which we were to sit, k la Turque. 
This meager poop was naturally a few inches above 
the general level of the raft and was therefore 
well out of the water if you did n't let your feet 
down. 

Katrina and I took our positions, commended our 
souls to Heaven, unfurled the green sunshade, and 
announced in a sepulchral voice that we were all set. 
Charles Roberts took up a long pole, placed himself 
at the bow, and we slid gracefully into midstream — 
which at this point was a broad and peaceful sheet of 
water gliding as softly as Browning says the Mayne 
doth. 

Well inshore, under the deep shadow of a beetling 
cliff and just missing the overhanging branches of 
riotous trees, we slipped gently along. In the dis- 
tance we could hear our carriage rattle away over the 
pebbles on shore, on its way to meet us miles below. 
Birds flitted in the air above. From every tree 
dripped the long pendants of the orchids which lead 
parasitic lives on all tropic forests. If there is a 
Styx in Heaven, as well as in Acheron, it must resem- 
ble the Rio Grande of Jamaica. 

After a half-mile or so of this uneventful but 
agreeable sailing we came to our first rapid. Se- 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 297 

cretly I had dreaded this. It turned out, however, to 
be a little one and not especially alarming. The 
water hastened its pace and then plunged down a 
long hill of rocks. Charles, suddenly awakened to 
alertness, picked out a promising reach and shot us 
into it with consummate skill. In a jiffy we were 
roaring down with the torrent at express speed, 
dragging gently over pebbles, shipping a sea now and 
then, but somehow keeping in the current and above 
all avoiding a broadside rush which would surely 
have dumped us unceremoniously into the stream. 
I suppose it was all over in thirty seconds — but 
it seemed longer. I reflected that the ultimate 
destination of our voyage lay many hundred feet 
below and that probably we should have our fill of 
rapids before we got there ; still there was a pleasant 
tingle of excitement in it, much like that of coasting 
at home. 

Danger there probably is none at all, save that of 
a possible, if improbable, wetting. Your raft might 
get away from its pilot and swing broadside to the 
stream — but it probably seldom does. Ours came 
near it only once, and when we had got straight 
again Charles Roberts made himself no little of a 
hero. He drew a fearsome picture of our potential 
wreck. But as the raft had dragged bottom all the 
way down and as a bath in that pellucid river in 



298 SAILING SOUTH 

that midsummer heat would have hurt no one, we 
refused to be greatly perturbed. 

Whereupon Charles betook himself to poling 
gently down another placid interval in the river 
and without warning raised his voice in song. He 
was not a grand-opera star, but his chantey was 
well designed to coordinate his muscular move- 
ments to the task in hand. It ran something like 
this, with a stout thrust of the pole at the end of 
every line for punctuation: 

"Come ovah hyah! 

Somebody say : 

Ah wanta find out whah that cullud fellah gone! 

Come ovah hyah! 

Somebody say: 

Ah wanta find out whah that cullud fellah gone. 

Oh, Yankee-doo-doo, 

Won't you come home? 

Oh, Yankee-doo-doo, 

Won't you come home? 

Yo' mammy longs to see you comin' home. 

" I 'se in dis land 
One hund'ed yeahs, 
Ah could n't save 
No dollahs hyah — 
Oh, Yankee-doo-doo, 
Won't you come home? 
Yo' mammy longs to see you comin' home!" 

Of course we clapped our hands and chirped as if 
we had never heard anything so delightful. Katrina 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 299 

demanded a repetition, which was cheerfully ac- 
corded, allegro ma non troppo. Likewise Charles 
Roberts sang others, the import of which I forget. 
But his repertoire was not extensive and when 
rapids engaged his attention — as they did ever 
and anon — the concert was interrupted. 

Now and again we met raftsmen working their 
way painfully back, which is a long job and one 
which has probably the same meager allurements 
that attend hauling your sled back to the top of a 
long coast. Charles drew attention to these men as 
being in some sort an image of himself after we had 
left him. He drew a melancholy picture of the hard 
pull, the lack of excitement, the meager pay. 
Standing with his back toward us and poling along 
the placid reaches between rapids he indulged in 
lachrymose soliloquy. 

"Chawles Roberts, you ole fool, whuffo' you 
spend yo* time raftin' white folks down dis ribber 
and den draggin' yo' ole raff back ag'in? Think 
what dey pays you for all dat hahd work! Would 
any one else do it fo' six shillin'? Ain't it worf 
twelve shillin'? Dat's what white folks hab to pay 
us when dey don't get no tickets at de hotel. When 
dey do get ticket at hotel us poor fellahs we don't 
get but six shillin'. Chawles Roberts, you certainly 
one big fool." 



300 SAILING SOUTH 

This speech was not by any means lost on us — 
who had bought hotel tickets — nor was it intended 
to be. It was addressed apparently to high heaven 
— which could be seen smiling as a remote blue 
above the precipices clad with verdure on either 
side of the stream. Katrina, whose charitable im- 
pulses are easily aroused, nudged me to investigate 
our dwindling store of silver and in a subdued voice 
pleaded the cause of a substantial tip. Some tele- 
pathic system, or possibly prolonged and ripe ex- 
perience, conveyed the glad tidings to the pilot, 
evidently, for very shortly he became less pessi- 
mistic and directed our attention to various birds 
of exotic breed — a languid heron perched on one 
pole-like leg in the shallows, and a pure white bird 
which he assured us was called "Darlin'." 

The charm of the Rio Grande, like that of Port 
Antonio, defies ordinary powers of description. In 
a way it is like Kubla Khan's sacred river, Alph, 
which ran through caverns measureless to man 
down to a sunless sea — save that no one could call 
the Caribbean sunless. It meanders leisurely enough 
for perhaps half a mile at a time, then gathers 
speed and slides abruptly to another level over a 
brawling bed of pebbles. It is much more than a 
brook, without being a real river, save at times of 
heavy rain. I doubt that there is a more beautiful 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 301 

stream in the world, or one more solitary; for the 
abruptness of the hills on either hand and the 
density of the jungle which clothes their nearly 
vertical slopes, prevents "the hand of man from 
setting foot" there and gives you all the sensation 
of being remote on the Amazon or Orinoco — when 
as a matter of fact you are n't at any point more 
than five miles from civilization of the most sophis- 
ticated kind as represented by the Hotel Titchfield. 

In all the voyage, which consumed perhaps an 
hour and a half, we saw not a soul save the returning 
raftsman. Never was there a house visible until we 
came to the final lower reaches, where the plain 
opened up to the sea admitting of banana culture, 
cocoa, pimento, and such-like growths. 

Here Charles Roberts announced that it was 
time to put in, and deftly quenched our prow in the 
slushy sand. Thence one picked one's way over 
moist rocks and gravel to the rudiments of a path, 
accompanied and assisted by said Charles, who said 
he would walk down the road "a piece" with us in 
hope that the carriage would have brought down 
his little son to help tow the raft back upstream. 

And behold it was even so. For when at last the 
belated horses appeared, there crouched in the stern- 
sheets a miniature Charles Roberts, grinning from 
ear to ear. 



302 SAILING SOUTH 

We were to go next day. It was a matter of get- 
ting up at five o'clock in the morning, wherefore we 
left word to be summoned by the watchman. The 
night being hot and the upper chamber where we 
dwelt stifling, we boldly slept with the door wide 
open. 

At what must have been the appointed hour I 
heard a stealthy step which approached our door, 
and then, finding it open, paused perplexed. It was 
the dusky guardian of our sleeping hours, and I 
heard him mutter tentatively, "Nobuddy hyah?" 

I called that I was there — what was up? 

"Oh, yassah! Ah come for to make a call!" 

In other words, it was time to get up, and time to 
go, rather than a mere social event. So out of bed, 
into clothes, down to the station — and back to 
Kingston, through thirty long and smoky tunnels 
as interludes in a glorious mountain landscape. 

That railroad ride over the mountains between 
Kingston and the northern ports is not altogether to 
be recommended. It cannot be a journey of much 
more than sixty miles, but it requires something like 
five hours, and a goodly part of the road lies through 
tunnels as hot and stifling as a fiery furnace. One 
recalls also Mark Twain's description of the ride 
along the coast near Genoa — "Like riding through 
a flute and looking out of the holes." Yet it must be 



RAFTING IN JAMAICA 303 

admitted that the view through the holes is invari- 
ably fascinating and the air of the altitudes at 
which most of the tunnels occur is more agreeable in 
temperature than that of the flat and uninspiring 
stretch that leads you at last into Kingston. No 
one, surely, ever takes the railroad across who can 
make the transit by motor. 

Katrina insists that if she were to choose between 
Jamaica and Porto Rico, she would unhesitatingly 
prefer the latter as better in climate and not inferior 
in scenery. On the whole I incline to concur, al- 
though it is with a reluctant accord. Porto Rico 
certainly has the less trying heat — but of the 
scenery I am more doubtful. That of Jamaica is 
hard to excel. Each to his taste — and much will 
depend upon one's power to support a degree of heat 
consistent with being very nearly in the sun's 
directest rays. Those of us gifted with the char- 
acteristics of the salamander will probably reverse 
our family judgment. Meantime, speaking in gen- 
eral, like Kipling's "Tramp Royal," I have liked 
them all. 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



